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NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

npr.org

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Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#211

Post by dylanfw »

frankc wrote: post #59

I propose the following system for commenting on news sites: -comment period open for 3 days after publication -comments are not published until the end of the comment period, then all published at once -you can submit 1 comment per article only After the comments are published, then a voting/ranking system is enabled for automatic sorting, but nothing is deleted except for spam This eliminates any back and forth arg…

I would imagine such a system would be mostly equivalent to no comment system at all. I'm not going to bother commenting if nobody can even see it, and 3 days later when they can I won't even remember that I commented.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#212

Post by initram »

I totally understand why they're doing this. Their comments section was terrible. I'm not at all surprised by the findings that a couple hundred to low few thousand commenters are posting the vast majority of comments.

I'm really surprised at the energy that the trolls on NPR spend. You'll see the same account posting rude comments on just about every article. Who has that kind of time?

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#213

Post by overcast »

wutbrodo wrote: post #208
overcast wrote: post #170

This is an interesting move, and a topic I've been discussing with friends. I've stopped using sites like Reddit, because the comment sections are just toxic. I've gone as far as installing Chrome extensions that make comment sections disappear from popular sites like YouTube. It's too easy to get drawn into the negativity, and I'm completely over it. "Social Networking" has reached it's low point as far as I'm conce…

> Hacker News is about the only civil place I'm capable of contributing to a discussion to at this point. Funnily enough, right around the time I made an acct here (4+ years ago, after ~1 year of lurking), I saw an internal post by a well-known Googler talking about the recent drastic decline of HN comment quality and looking for a replacement. I still get value out of HN comments (clearly), but it's definitely chang…

There is always going to be the elitist attitude of newcomers ruining things for the "OG" people. However there is certainly no way HN compares to the rest of the drivel out there. Always going to be a fine line between popularity, and trash.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#214

Post by overcast »

iamdave wrote: post #210
overcast wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I get this response every time I talk about this topic. I really dislike the "well no one is making you use / buy / watch / listen" to something. People can be critical of something they want to succeed. It happens a lot in certain game communities. What if I WANT to talk about politics, in a civil manner? Any sufficiently popular subreddit, just devolves into complete trash.

/r/politicaldiscussion was created as a response to the malarkey that has become /r/politics and they place an emphasis on civil, reasoned debate. May be worth your time.

Thanks, just over Reddit in general. Quit about a year ago.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#215

Post by vectorpush »

justinlardinois wrote: post #147
vectorpush wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the GP would agree with your sentiments, however, NPR pretty clearly slants to the left. All their hosts lean to the left and the composition of their multi-guest panels usually include a balance of viewpoints that lean more to the left. Still, among popular news sources on both the left and the right I think they are about as fair as they come. Certainly on NPR the hosts are not hostile towards opposing…

Have you ever listened to NPR? A large portion of the content has nothing to do with politics.

And a large part of it does have to do with politics... what's your point? Obviously non-political content is not what I'm addressing here.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#216

Post by overcast »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #205
overcast wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I get this response every time I talk about this topic. I really dislike the "well no one is making you use / buy / watch / listen" to something. People can be critical of something they want to succeed. It happens a lot in certain game communities. What if I WANT to talk about politics, in a civil manner? Any sufficiently popular subreddit, just devolves into complete trash.

That's probably due to the nature of politics. It certainly tends to get a lot of people riled quite easily. What's that thing about polite company not talking about politics, religion, or sex. The average person, myself definitely included, probably doesn't have much worth listening to on the subject anyway. To paraphrase PJ O'Rourke: though there certainly are many political commentators who might be worth listing…

It's just not politics, it's anything sufficiently popular to attract a large portion of the general public. Only niche categories, with a small group of passionate people work. Otherwise, it turns into a free for all.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#217

Post by iamdave »

overcast wrote: post #214
iamdave wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/r/politicaldiscussion was created as a response to the malarkey that has become /r/politics and they place an emphasis on civil, reasoned debate. May be worth your time.

Thanks, just over Reddit in general. Quit about a year ago.

Can't really say I blame you. Found any other interesting communities other than HN, obviously since we're both here?

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#218

Post by mholmes680 »

Theodores wrote: post #167
omginternets wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on incentivizing constructive comments? I've seen publishers (The Guardian, if memory serves) select thoughtful comments and re-print them as micro-articles in their own right. This seems to solve part of the problem by setting an established, if not mostly-objective, standard for comment quality: journalistic publication standards. As such, bias and opinion is welcome, provided that it's analy…

When I was delivering newspapers as a small child many aeons ago, the best page of The Guardian was 'letters to the editor'. The rest of the paper was pretty good back then, there was no email, so anything printed in the 'letters to the editor' had to be posted in, to appear some time after the events in question. Needless to say an event happened and was reported the next day, so it could be a whole week between the…

Its interesting that simply restricting immediate commenting might at least deter useless comments. People who are commenting in order to elicit a response, i suppose, probably have less important things to say. Or maybe they wouldn't say them if they are not granted the immediate satisfaction.

I assume it would kill some collaboration/innovation like on HN or a meaningful subreddit, but maybe no one really ever has anything meaningful to say when reacting to general news...

I guess it would also produce duplication from many people not knowing something was said already (however, the duplicate reactions could be monetized later down the line maybe...)

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#219

Post by Yhippa »

showerst wrote: post #17

I see comment moderation as one of the 'unsolved problems' left in this generation of the web. When I worked at Foreign Policy we worked hard to integrate new commenting tools and encourage power users, but we were just buried by the threats, spam, and low-value noise. Web technology scales, journalism scales (poorly, but a relatively small publication can pull big traffic), but right now there's just no substitute f…

Nobody old enough on here to remember Slashdot's moderation system?

Not everybody could promote or demote comments. You got randomly assigned the ability to moderate comments so when it came your turn you took it _seriously_.

That community had one of the highest quality comments. Then somewhere in the mid-2000's it got super anti-Microsoft and anti-anything-not-F/OSS. I'll give them credit; it probably reflected the highest quality comments of their userbase at the time.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#220

Post by xemdetia »

cookiecaper wrote: post #91
notadoc wrote: post #47

95% of internet comments are pure trash and basically internet pollution. The other 5% can be a mixture of deep insight, thoughtful discussion, and relevant opinion. Sorting out the trash and insisting on quality comments is an unsolved problem, perhaps with an eventual tech solution. The New York Times is probably the only site I know of that does comments well, and they are obviously heavily moderated. But, they're…

We should ask ourselves what value on-article comment sections provide. I believe HN is good because it serves a specific trade purpose and caters to a specific high-end niche audience. HN's participants are willing to cross a significant participation threshold to be part of the community here. I believe that kind of structure needs to be in place to get good community participation. I guess I'd summarize it with th…

Mostly everything you described in that list was something that most web forums and usenet provided, but they were supplanted with a mix of on-article comments and social media in it's current state. It is frustrating to have seen most forums end up evaporating but they are just hard to keep momentum in.

It would be really nice to see someone figure out a good way to bring forums back in a way that didn't turn into a black hole.

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