Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 463 posts

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#241

Post by jsmthrowaway »

eddieh wrote: post #233
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…

Even HN has declined, but what bothers me most is that HN has a definite range of views that are acceptable. This limits useful discourse. e.g. someone should be able to criticize Elon Musk without being downvoted to hell. While HN does stay civil, I think it is too limited in general. Don't get me wrong, the reason I use HN is because the discussion hasn't devolved into /. or reddit. However, HN would do well to enc…

The anti-dissent phenomenon is amplified by the greying of comments, which continues to be a bad idea all these years later. The literal message and incentive there is: leave a comment that gets upvotes or it will get progressively harder to read until nobody can actually read it. So now you have to care about what you say, because it will be completely removed from the site by natural voting if you don't toe a certain line, meaning folks cannot objectively review your comment on its merits alone unless they go out of their way to highlight it. The absence of a showgrey even though showdead exists is an interesting thing that somewhat describes intent behind the feature, too.

Greying is one of the key factors in the anti-dissent, party-line mode here, which I've noticed as well. It was weird to pull scores and then implicitly put them back with greying, so you can at least tell if a comment is I'd love to see some analysis on whether a grey comment is more likely to be downvoted, as well, because I'm almost positive it is. Once someone hits me with a 0, which is discernible as slightly greyer by itself, that comment is almost guaranteed to end up very negative.

My opinions often diverge from HN and I am rewarded with barely-visible commentary very often, so I've been trained over time to resent voting rather than wish to contribute here, which I don't think is the spirit nor the intent of the greying feature. I don't think HN wants to be an echo chamber, to be clear, it's just that the quirks of the system create incentives that give rise to it. The last thing on planet Earth that I care about is my karma score, but I do care that what I say matters, and I cannot really talk about it because it sounds like complaining about downvoting.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette#wiki_in_regard_to_vo...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#242

Post by dredmorbius »

Yhippa wrote: post #219
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…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12308662

At one point I actually helped design something somewhat better (which was implemented in part). I've had further ideas since.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28jfk4/content...

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#243

Post by gruyere »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #235
eddieh wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even HN has declined, but what bothers me most is that HN has a definite range of views that are acceptable. This limits useful discourse. e.g. someone should be able to criticize Elon Musk without being downvoted to hell. While HN does stay civil, I think it is too limited in general. Don't get me wrong, the reason I use HN is because the discussion hasn't devolved into /. or reddit. However, HN would do well to enc…

> This limits useful discourse. e.g. someone should be able to criticize Elon Musk without being downvoted to hell. Can you give some examples where someone criticized Musk and was downvoted?

Trying to bring up gender equality issues, which is a genuine problem in our industry, also has a similar response. There are a variety of 'taboo' subjects that will get you grayed out and gone in no time at all.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#244

Post by gruyere »

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…

You and I are around the same group, but I've long since abandoned participating in these conversations. Honestly I am in these comments because I had hoped this was the conversation being had. The HN community drove me away long ago.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#245

Post by minimaxir »

jsmthrowaway wrote: post #241
eddieh wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even HN has declined, but what bothers me most is that HN has a definite range of views that are acceptable. This limits useful discourse. e.g. someone should be able to criticize Elon Musk without being downvoted to hell. While HN does stay civil, I think it is too limited in general. Don't get me wrong, the reason I use HN is because the discussion hasn't devolved into /. or reddit. However, HN would do well to enc…

The anti-dissent phenomenon is amplified by the greying of comments, which continues to be a bad idea all these years later. The literal message and incentive there is: leave a comment that gets upvotes or it will get progressively harder to read until nobody can actually read it. So now you have to care about what you say, because it will be completely removed from the site by natural voting if you don't toe a certa…

> I'd love to see some analysis on whether a grey comment is more likely to be downvoted

Two years ago I did an analysis of HN comment scores (back when they were publicly accessible). There are far fewer comments with -1 score than with 0 score: http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_po...

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#246

Post by lucretian »

robwilliams wrote: post #237
lucretian wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think your diagnosis is wrong. show me a conservative news outlet on the web with a high SNR of thoughtful and intelligent comments, free of frothing, conspiracy-laden bullshit. maybe the NYT is an echo chamber because modern conservative positions are so weak and contradictory, they can't stand the withering critique of a well-moderated forum. instead, they only survive in troll havens. as for brooks' column, you…

I was not comparing NYT to any other news outlet. It's an echo chamber regardless of the fact that conservative news sites also have echo chamber comment sections. The David Brooks article was just an example. When Bernie Sanders was still campaigning every comment on Hillary/Bernie-related articles was about how the New York Times is wrong and that Bernie is the best, people will learn about the political revolution…

neither am i comparing them. you're observing that the NYT comment section is free of trolls/spam but is otherwise a liberal echo chamber. that's another way of saying that it's lacking a counter-balance of intelligent conservative comments. i'm accepting that critique for the purpose of argumentation, and replying by asking you to look around and find anywhere on the web that has a majority critical mass of intelligent conservative commentary. once you realize that it pretty much doesn't exist, maybe that will lead to a different conclusion...

anyway, one of the few places i read that, for whatever reason, does carry an even mix of intelligent comments across the spectrum is interfluidity. for example:

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6400.html

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#247

Post by [deleted] »

gruyere wrote: post #243
pavel_lishin wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This limits useful discourse. e.g. someone should be able to criticize Elon Musk without being downvoted to hell. Can you give some examples where someone criticized Musk and was downvoted?

Trying to bring up gender equality issues, which is a genuine problem in our industry, also has a similar response. There are a variety of 'taboo' subjects that will get you grayed out and gone in no time at all.

[deleted]

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#248

Post by jessaustin »

Grue3 wrote: post #103

I find the lack of comment section to correlate strongly with the author's self-importance and inability to take criticism. I even read such articles with a sneering, bloviating voice in my head. Makes reading all the pointless medium articles much more entertaining.

Doesn't Medium have comments?

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#250

Post by jsmthrowaway »

minimaxir wrote: post #245
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-dissent phenomenon is amplified by the greying of comments, which continues to be a bad idea all these years later. The literal message and incentive there is: leave a comment that gets upvotes or it will get progressively harder to read until nobody can actually read it. So now you have to care about what you say, because it will be completely removed from the site by natural voting if you don't toe a certa…

> I'd love to see some analysis on whether a grey comment is more likely to be downvoted Two years ago I did an analysis of HN comment scores (back when they were publicly accessible). There are far fewer comments with -1 score than with 0 score: http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-comments/distribution_comment_po...

You could really use a log scale there, but I'm glad you did the work. Thanks!
Post reply on HN