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NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

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Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#321

Post by adrusi »

marcos123 wrote: post #317
tetrep wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably because doubting things isn't very useful. I can question the long term safety of walking up stairs, but unless I can provide an argument such that rational people are convinced they should also be concerned, I wouldn't be surprised at downvotes. Not to knock the Anti-GMO argument[0], but it's similar to other conspiracy arguments. I can make so many rational arguments against it, but I know from the ou…

My questioning the long term safety of GMO's is logical though. Peer reviewed studies on the topic just plain don't address the very real possibility that GMO's can have very harmful effects 20, 30, or 50+ years down the road. Both to our environment and our bodies. Believing that a short term study that concludes they're "safe" also means they're safe in the long term is quite a leap of faith, and illogical. Edit: T…

Maybe I'm making a good case for eliminating comments by contributing to this tangent. On the other hand, maybe I'm making a good case for my claim that HN's comments are not nearly as plagued by groupthink as people claim.

The problem is treating GMOs as a category. Maybe there's good reason to be concerned that genetic modificiations that make crops less attractive to pests are hazardous to long-term health (I have no idea if there are), but what does that concern have to do with the risk of introducing genes to grow larger fruits?

I'm sure you can find reasons to be worried about any possible application of genetic engineering, but if you're willing to get that creative, you can find reason to be worried about any agricultural innovations. Maybe you claim that the introduction of a lentil gene to soy will indirectly create come carcinogen through protein interactions, but why don't you worry about the same issue when a new fertilizer is introduced? It seems to me that it's only because transgenic plants are new and scary and people are uneasy about "playing god".

Asbestos was ALWAYS known to be dangerous [1] so not a great example. I can't think of a case off the top of my head where long-term safety was incorrectly assumed from short-term studies. Perhaps some medicines? Anyway, in principle you're right that short term studies say little about long term impacts on health.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#Discovery_of_toxicity

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#322

Post by webXL »

adrusi wrote: post #314
giancarlostoro wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> e.g. someone should be able to criticize Elon Musk without being downvoted to hell. I wish downvoting wouldn't be allowed without a "reply" to parent post, that way if I'm being downvoted nonstop I know why. Sometimes I get downvoted like crazy and have no clue as to why. Or even if I guess it doesn't add to the conversation to just shut me out because you disagree without teaching me why. I wonder how HN would be…

But sometimes the point of downvoting is to bury a comment so that it doesn't dominate the discussion. If downvoting required a reply it would achieve the opposite effect.

Only if the replies were visible on a buried comment, or perhaps instead of hiding or automatically collapsing, they could be "moved" to the user's Threads page.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#323

Post by latj »

godshatter wrote: post #264
latj wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think using FB login pretty much solves the problem as it is today. Take a look at civilbeat.com a regional news site by Pierre Omidyar (The Intercept). I'm fairly certain they only allowed comments via FB login for years. It meant a lot fewer comments than they would have gotten but they were all legit. Now it looks like they allow FB, Twitter, or local auth. But the comments are still mostly ok. Maybe they a…

It solves the problem for me, I guess. I won't be commenting anywhere you have to log in to facebook because I don't want them tracking me all over the web. While a facebook account gives some legitimacy, I also like sites where you can post anonymously or at least pseudonymously.

If you are using Tor Browser in Tails over a coffee shop wifi while you are laying down under a blanket in the back of a truck driven by a stateless hobo with no fingerprints who you intend to murder later in a country with a healthy democracy, you are probably still not anonymous. If you are not doing those things, you are definitely not anonymous.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#325

Post by astrodust »

mrweasel wrote: post #78

We don't need to be able to comment on EVERYTHING. Unless you actively plan to use the comments for something, I think most sites should just remove them. It's fine to give people a outlet, a place for them to let their voice be heard. It often just misused and not a core feature for most sites. Even Youtube barely need comments. What I believe we need is a revival of the forum sites. Give people place beyond Reddit…

4chan is so toxic I'm surprised it hasn't been declared an EPA Superfund site.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#326

Post by pavel_lishin »

joezydeco wrote: post #207
roywiggins wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metafilter does moderation well. They have a team of paid moderators. It costs a token $5 to join, which means it's expensive to generate sock puppets and anyway the moderators keep your credit card on file so they can permaban you if they need to.

Having payment linked to a name goes a long way towards deterrence, IMO.

I think it's more than that; it's a psychological thing. You're not likely to shell out five bucks to spew an epithet at someone - you have to think about it. You have to get your payment info together. You have to think about your budget, even a bit in passing.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#327

Post by astrodust »

jonathankoren wrote: post #143
empath75 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4chan is a cesspool.

So are the comment sections on news outlets. If you really want to be depressed check your local paper's comment sections.

They're full of people who just have to get things off their chest, but at least they don't have cheerleaders encouraging them to be even more asshole than they already are.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#328

Post by solipsism »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #297
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…

> e.g. someone should be able to criticize Elon Musk without being downvoted to hell. I wish downvoting wouldn't be allowed without a "reply" to parent post, that way if I'm being downvoted nonstop I know why. Sometimes I get downvoted like crazy and have no clue as to why. Or even if I guess it doesn't add to the conversation to just shut me out because you disagree without teaching me why. I wonder how HN would be…

The problem with HN is that 90% of the downvote justifications would be "this differs from my worldview".

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#329

Post by flomo »

edraferi wrote: post #294
basch wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it seems sites find it to complex to implement. slashdot nailed moderation, no one has attempted something similar. most systems are simple up/down vote or like/report i am also starting to wonder if the agegroup being hired to implement "social" for websites is now young enough to have missed slashdot in it s prime. the fact that people are still brainstorming from scratch instead of talking about how to improve sla…

> i am also starting to wonder if the agegroup being hired to implement "social" for websites is now young enough to have missed slashdot in it s prime. That's me! Can you explain the Slashdot model and why it worked? Or point to a good write up about it somewhere else?

Slashdot's method of scoring comments was overly complicated and probably did not produce any better results than reddit-style voting. However, Slashdot's killer feature was that the reader could filter by comment score and thus only read the 'good' comments, and not have to wade through hundreds of replies.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#330

Post by mintplant »

hsod wrote: post #276
vertex-four wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right-libertarian views are generally most popular here - both "conservative" and "liberal" (American definitions of both) views are generally not popular. And god forbid you have views that would be considered slightly left of center in much of the EU.

I think this is pretty true for economic issues, but not for diversity/identity politics/social justice. On those issues, the HN-hivemind is pretty solidly leftist (though not to the extremes of some corners of the web).

Wait, what? Really? I would point to the comments on just about any "women in tech" story as a counterexample.
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