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NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

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Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#371

Post by rogerdpack »

jccalhoun wrote: post #171
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…

I'm not sold on it because a lot of newspaper web sites use facebook comments and any topic about politics, race, or gender seem to be full of people making hateful comments.

Seems like it was quite "better" than the alternative (basically anonymous user logins making comments) for my home towns recent transition to fb comments, for what it's worth...

The one place I've actually found awesome comments was "the economist" (well, HN isn't bad either), and the ny times is kind of OK. Everywhere else feels pretty iffy...

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#372

Post by syngrog66 »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #368
syngrog66 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you had me until this: > Hacker News is about the only civil place I'm capable of contributing to a discussion to at this point. that statement floored me because historically, HN has been one of the most toxic comment forums I've seen. I've kept coming back despite it, not because of it. there's enough signal to justify it. but it's a kind of low-grade toxicity: a weird mix of passive aggressiveness, disagree-based-…

If this is one of the most toxic forums you've come across, you must be very fortunate almost to the point of being sheltered. Not saying this is the best ever, but it's nowhere near the worst. The worst traits on HN seem to be an abundance of nitpicking with some disagreements on a few pet topics. Many other sites have active anti-social posters that abuse users for fun, start flamewars for the "lulz" and will argue…

you're right and wrong. :-) (which is the best kind of right/wrong? haha)

what I mean is... I tried to make a subtle point, but it didn't come across. what I was trying to say was this is one of the most toxic sites I've seen for a certain mix of toxic behaviors: mostly passive-aggressive, hyper-nerdy/autism-spectrum types of comments, humblebragging, etc. I agree with you wholeheartedly, from my own experience that yes there are other sites where there is more direct abuse, more direct trolling and harassment, which doesn't happen (or nearly as much) here on HN. what I'm saying is, on the flip side, I see a lot more of a certain kind of... there needs to be a word for it... the slang terms I learned for it were douchebags, pinheads, compulsives, booksmart-yet-streetdumb, etc. I just have never encountered that as much over on Reddit (itself a broad category because so much variance between subreddits there, and front page vs not) as I have here on HN.

again, I wasn't saying there's no signal here, and no politeness. I see lots of politeness and maturity here. also lots of muck. thus my slang term "shit salad" -- mix of good and bad. my point was that there's a different assortment of bad behavior I see here than on Reddit, CNN etc.

it does appear to me to have improved a lot, especially over the last several months. we'll see. YMMV.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#373

Post by someguydave »

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…

The only solution is for trusted commenters to rate cryptographically signed comments. And they would only do so if they felt like doing so.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#374

Post by justinlardinois »

michaelbuddy wrote: post #349
justinlardinois wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality has a well-demonstrated liberal bias.

This was a great comment 10 years ago. Then a lot of us watching the daily show grew up became conservative and learned that Colbert is full of baloney, hence his terrible ratings on network TV.

"You'll be a conservative once you're older" was a great comment 30 years ago. :)

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#375

Post by T2_t2 »

derefr wrote: post #361
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…

A hypothetical social-discussion model I've been meaning to build an MVP of: 1. there are replies and up-voting, but no down-voting; 2. you can classify a comment reply, at time of posting, as a "rebuttal"; 3. up-voting a rebuttal comment will also be considered as down-voting its parent; 4. the aggregate score of a subthread is calculated as a Euclidean distance, with all the positively-scored comments as dimensions…

Why remove downvoting directly? I'm not against the idea, I just want to understand the thinking.

I wonder if the problem is the binary nature of so many things. 5 star/1 star reviews are the most common, we have up and down votes, but no real context for that. I wonder if the problem that needs to be solved isn't context, rather than directional.

This is me spitballing, so feel free to IGNORE everything below.

I was listening to the Freakonomics podcast on proper voting (e.g. elections) the other day - this one: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/idea-must-die-election-editi... - and there was an idea called quadratic voting. http://ericposner.com/quadratic-voting/

Anyway, the idea is that we all get X votes, and we can vote more on some things, e.g. if we REALLY want marijuana legal, I can vote 4 votes. The twist is that the cost of extra votes is the square of the number of votes, 2 costs 4, 3 costs 9 (we all get maths works).

The theory is this lets people vote on what they care about, much less than simply voting equally.

I was wondering there isn't some way to create a system where you earn votes, that you can spend in some similar way, e.g. you "earn" upvotes from others, and can spend them elsewhere. If everyone got a single vote, but you earned extra votes you could spend in interesting ways at increasing cost, e.g. you could heavily downvote an idea at an exponential rate, it might make people less a victim of common denominator views, give fringe views more airtime, and make people consider a vote more deeply. Not just yes/no but how much do I hate/love this idea? Enough to blow 100 points on 10 down/up votes?

Anyway, just some random braincrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8) I needed to get out.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#376

Post by yodsanklai »

bradleyankrom wrote: post #251
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…

Re HN: also anything that can be coerced into a political discussion will devolve quickly. Conservative views typically wind up grayed, even when they are substantive arguments.

> Conservative views typically wind up grayed, even when they are substantive arguments.

Not sure about that, could you find one such comment? Many people would upvote any greyed comment that comes with substantive arguments, regardless of their political view.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#377

Post by doctorshady »

solipsism wrote: post #328
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…

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

There's a nice irony to the downvotes you're getting on this post.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#378

Post by pyromine »

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…

Wait, I didn't realize the prevailing opinion was that "right to be forgotten" is a good thing. I thought the pseudo-libertarian strain combined with the strong archival beliefs of many on HN would be turn common opinion against it.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#379

Post by yodsanklai »

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…

> So now you have to care about what you say

Exactly, you have to care about what you say, and that's exactly why I love HN comments so much. Also, you make it sounds like there are such great comments that disappear because of the downvotes, but it's not the case. The only disappearing comments are stupid jokes or trolls. I don't remember any well-argued position that I was unable to read because of the downvote.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#380

Post by wildmusings »

bradleyankrom wrote: post #257
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is because it is de facto HN policy to be OK with downvoting to register disagreement. pg put that one down and it hasn't changed.

I've noticed flagging being used similarly, too. The argument that downvoting should be used to register disagreement falls apart when you consider that only users with enough (>= 500, I think?) karma have disagreement privileges.

Flagging is extremely effective in taking content off the front page. I understand the intention, to quickly kill spam and avoid flame war topics, but it's extremely powerful in even preventing discussion on issues and it is probably a greater contribution to groupthink than downvoting comments is. Agenda setting, controlling which topics are discussed at all, is way more powerful than controlling the range of views expressed on those topics.
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