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NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

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Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#351

Post by michaelmrose »

makecheck wrote: post #320
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…

Also, I think that replies accompanying down-votes should be displayed directly next to the comment as a sort of tag (i.e. you can’t click a down-arrow alone, you have to type out something like “not accurate” or “flame” or “I don’t like his hair” or whatever the reason is) and then the comment appears as: foobar_user 1 hour ago | -1:“not accurate” -1:“flame” -1:“I don’t like his hair”.

I really love your idea

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#352

Post by qu4z-2 »

dmatthewson wrote: post #260

They cite cost as the issue, that only 2600 users represent half of all comments on their entire system. I don't know how much they are paying for a third party to manage their comment system, but I will bid $500/month to handle those 2600 users comprising half of all comments, or $1000/month for all comments. All inclusive bid. I can get this tiny number of users running on a pretty modest system. My proposed system…

Have you factored in that you need to serve the comments to every user, not just ones that comment? I mean, to be fair, you could probably serve staticish chunks of HTML and update-on-new-comment, but it's a consideration.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#353

Post by ewoodrich »

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…

Same boat. No longer frequent Reddit except for a very small number of subs.

I have Adblock/Tampermonkey rules to hide comment sections from most news sites that I frequent. (If someone could point me to an extension that handles this, I'd be quite happy...)

I consider comment sections (or even comment counts) to be visual noise that distracts from grokking the actual content.

It's unfortunate, because I like hearing a variety of perspectives. But without highly aggressive curation, reading comments is a net negative on popular sites.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#354

Post by dismantlethesun »

tetrep wrote: post #304
marcos123 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? To me, the thing that is most discouraging about HN is the rampant closed mindedness. For example, anyone who questions the long term safety of genetically modifying organisms and eating them, will always be downvoted to oblivion.

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…

I feel it is hard to change you reputation so long as people remember your previous actions.

For most of human society, memory was constrained to the brain, which fuzzily remembers at best, and within mere years only can make summaries of past events.

Now with high quality video from phones, voice records, and text preserved in perpetuity, people can not only merely remember a person held inane ideas, but also see exactly what, when, and in which context they held those ideas.

So long as that's possible, it's easy for others to critique by saying "people can change, but X person said Y and that's beyond the event horizon for me".

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#355

Post by bbradley406 »

adrusi wrote: post #321
marcos123 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>but what does that concern have to do with the risk of introducing genes to grow larger fruits?

Off the top of my head, there are several consequences that fall into the realm of possibility. Larger fruits will require more resources from the host plant, which could alter its development in unpredictable ways. More nutrients could be taken from the soil in order to make larger fruits, leading to earlier depletion and requiring more crop rotation (a process many farmers put off due to profits). Larger fruits will attract larger animals to graze (just look at what happens when hikers throw apple cores / other compost into the woods, it alters the movement patterns of multiple species).

I understand these examples sound hyperbolic, and I think GMO's are definitely beneficial in some situations. However, introducing changes to the very genetics of our ecosystem faster than they would naturally occur has definite effects. To think that we can adequately anticipate, react, and solve issues caused by these effects seems a bit hopeful, at least until we have a very advanced computational model simulation of our ecosystem.

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should." - Ian, Jurassic Park

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#356

Post by intended »

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…

Don't have time to elaborate - but moderation tools actually link to many other deeper problems in meat space, and IMO lead to the kind of tools which-should-not-be-made.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#357

Post by int_19h »

labster wrote: post #312
dcposch wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just not true. For example, universal basic income--a leftist idea even by European standards--has been discussed several times on HN. Lots of substantive comments both for and against.

Are you sure UBI is a leftist idea? The things that go along with UBI read like a right-wing wishlist: eliminate the minimum wage, discontinue welfare and unemployment benefits, and end the food stamp program. In its place, the free market would determine how best to spend basic income.

The core notion of it, though, which is government handing out money to people, is rather contrary to pure right-wing (especially libertarian) thinking; even more so when it comes to the "universal" part.

It tends to be supported by some more pragmatic libertarians, who recognize that some form of welfare is necessary, and see UBI as the least-overhead form that, if not the cheapest economically, keeps the associated bureaucracy (and the government sprawl induced by that) to the minimum.

However, it is also a popular idea on the left, especially among the more individualist-minded liberals, left libertarians etc.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#358

Post by unethical_ban »

robwilliams wrote: post #150
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…

The New York Times comments are free from trolls and spam, but it's a frustratingly obvious echo chamber when it comes to politics. I'm a liberal guy but I can't stand it. David Brooks wrote an interesting column ( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluenc... ) a week or so ago and most of the comments are just bashing him for being a Republican, as if that has anything to do with the subject matte…

Holy Hell, you are right. I actually have the distinguished privilege of having one of my NYTimes comments be a "Times Pick", meaning the ed. board actually read it and recommended it for insight, I suppose.

My comment was mostly meta, calling out people for missing the point of an op-ed. The op-ed was from a privacy/civil liberties person about why a "no buy" list for guns would be a bad idea. He wasn't arguing on the merits for or against gun ownership, just that these secret lists on which LEO acts are dangerous.

Every comment was something along the lines of "What about my right not to be shot in the streets?!" - I tried to point this myopic view out, and every reply to my comment was "What about my right not to be shot in the streets?!".

As a smallish-government liberal (Public services are well and good but government should be kept in check by a powerful and vigilant population) I get torn up whenever I defend gun rights or spending reductions on that website.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#359

Post by mynameishere »

justinlardinois wrote: post #145
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.

Do you scroll down on every site you come across to check for a comment section before you start reading?

All the time. For many websites, the very first comment is a succinct and correct refutation of the article or blogpost itself. And that is why comment sections are disappearing. People really don't mind "trolls" or whatever all that much. They do mind being proven wrong.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#360

Post by supernovae »

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 purpose of community is to express common interests & shared values. Hackernews tends to express a shared value around Elon Musk. That is perfectly fine. It's something that should be respected even if you have differing views.

I bet a lot of the reason people down vote you about Elon Musk is that maybe you don't accept him as a "hacker" and don't see the way he's challenging the status quo and pushing technology, cars, transportation and energy systems into the future. Hacking the auto industry, the solar industry, the space industry. What he does very much fits the "Ethos" of what makes hackernews hackernews..

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