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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

#381

Post by groovy2shoes »

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…

> 3. up-voting a rebuttal comment will also be considered as down-voting its parent;

I often upvote both a comment and its rebuttal, because in many debates I have no dog in the race and I often find that people on both sides have valuable or otherwise interesting insights. Even if I don't agree with them completely, I sometimes find that I'm able to view an issue from another perspective that I hadn't considered before.

Not to mention, many debates really just don't have a clear answer, and to pit commentors against each other like that is to enable one of them to be declared "winner", which I think would be misleading in many cases.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#382

Post by ec109685 »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #58
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…

Disqus more or less figured out comment moderation around me. I'm yet to see a Disqus-powered comment system overran by undesirable content. HN is failing at comments. During last years, the community deteriorated to the point where for many articles every single comment is grayed-out downvoted. That signifies quite a rift in community. HN used to be upvote-intensive excitement-driven but today it's downvote-intensiv…

How has disqus figured out comment moderation? As far as I know, they don't make a big effort to create great comment communities. Do you have any extra details?

HN has far better comments than any disqus comment feed, on average, in my opinion.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#383

Post by ec109685 »

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…

That's really better than me being able to reply to you and ask for clarifications? I think you described letters to the editor, not comments.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#384

Post by ec109685 »

CM30 wrote: post #270
davesque wrote: post #60

Don't they use Disqus? Is that really a very big expense?

Pretty sure Disqus is often set up so comments are also stored in the site's database. That's how it worked when I used it for a WordPress site. So all the comment text is likely being stored on the NPR website, even with Disqus.

That isn't how Disqus works. It is a centrally hosted widget.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#385

Post by enraged_camel »

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 think providing short reasons isn't enough. If you wrote a long post and I downvoted it with "not accurate" it doesn't help much, does it?

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#386

Post by enraged_camel »

tkinom wrote: post #319
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…

I like stackoverflow type of feedback, comments, vote up/down system. Not perfect, but a lot of thinking go into that part of the website design. But not sure if those ideas for technical focus (with "right" A to the Q) website can be easily applied to more political website such as NPR.

I like that downvoting on Stackoverflow costs their equivalent of karma.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#387

Post by tn13 »

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…

HN has become some kind of left liberal forum these days.

Personally I love the negativity of reddit and I enjoy it too. Snarky, sarcastic, vulgar or insulting comments in my opinion are part of discourse too.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#388

Post by enraged_camel »

wildmusings wrote: post #380
bradleyankrom wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you can "vouch" for posts and submissions now to counter the flagging. Of course, that assumes you will catch them before they fall off the front page or get auto-deleted.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#389

Post by PieterH »

james-watson wrote: post #370
mintplant wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have had previous accounts banned for stating the following: "Homo sapiens are a sexually dimorphic species of primates, in which the Y chromosome results in differential physiological development between males and females." So yes, HN is quite a hivemind when it comes to gender/identity politics. In fact, I have a feeling I'll get banned for this comment.

HN is overall polite and mature, especially compared to Reddit. Yet it can't escape its background culture. Some truths will always be taboo.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#390

Post by sdoering »

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…

> disagree without teaching

That is the single most compelling reason, why I find most people (on|off)line disturbing. They just want to drown out dissent without helping other people argumentatively to understand the opposing view.

OK, that is probably, because they oftentimes do not have real arguments and haven't rationalized their position at all.

Maybe the past paragraph is just me being a misanthrope. Or maybe the internet is just too big - as bigger discourses tend to deteriorate.

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