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

Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 233 posts

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#31

Post by mratzloff »

colordrops wrote: post #16

Many sites have been closing their comments section. It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message. Rather than finding a technical solution or one that involves moderation, these sites just shut the community out and become a broadcast medium once again. A notable removal of a comments section was NPR's shutdown right around the time of the Democratic National Convention. Th…

In my opinion, and I would venture the opinion of most of these organizations shutting down their comment sections, the comments being posted add nothing to the discussion and have to be monitored for abuse. That's apparent on the majority of Facebook, in my experience: children arguing and calling names. There is no positive.

You want to dissent? An Internet comment is about the least effective way to do it.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#32

Post by lmm »

charlesism wrote: post #5

Hopefully the biker bar analogy* is correct. Every year it feels more and more like the bikers are actually the majority . * https://chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/

Interesting to look back on this. Reddit seems to be doing fine now - it's put the line in a clear and simple place, and while there are occasional paranoid grumblings that certain subreddits are getting away with brigading it's mostly working out. Whereas Twitter - which seemed to follow a line closer to the one being advocated there - is a disaster area.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#33

Post by brilliantcode »

anonymity without oversight that actively kills toxic individuals is going to revert to the lowest possible quality.

there should be some rule: The lower the friction for anonymous commentators the greater the affinity towards resembling a low quality and toxic communities.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#34

Post by ebbv »

Fr0ntBack wrote: post #2

I think if you're getting mostly garbage comments, it should give you pause for thought. Yes, the format of the internet doesn't encourage thoughtful, polite comments. But equally there might be a problem with what you're writing if you're attracting trolls. This is certainly true of Vice.

This just isn't true. Every site I've ever seen get above a certain threshold of popularity has its comments site turn to utter garbage, if it wasn't terrible already.

The problem is that once your comments section quality reaches a certain point, nobody wants to bother spending time an effort writing something thoughtful. For two reasons; one it seems like nobody there will appreciate it and two it gets drowned out by the noise that surrounds anything bombastic.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#36

Post by aaronblohowiak »

gdulli wrote: post #25
charlesism wrote: post #5

Hopefully the biker bar analogy* is correct. Every year it feels more and more like the bikers are actually the majority . * https://chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/

The saddest thing about the fact that Reddit hasn't been disrupted is what that says about the collective tolerance of what it is.

maybe we don't read the same subreddits, but /r/programming /r/woodworking and /r/personalfinance are all mostly cordial.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#37

Post by gdulli »

kevinburke wrote: post #29
colordrops wrote: post #16

Many sites have been closing their comments section. It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message. Rather than finding a technical solution or one that involves moderation, these sites just shut the community out and become a broadcast medium once again. A notable removal of a comments section was NPR's shutdown right around the time of the Democratic National Convention. Th…

> It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message. Insofar as "control the message" means "we are tired of anonymous people in our comments section doxxing our authors and other people, and vile, racist attacks on our authors and groups of people", then yes, this is an attempt to "control the message." > Since NPR clearly had a pro-Hillary agenda, the comments section had to go…

> There's no evidence for this, and it's unrelated to the topic.

What it lacks in veracity it makes up for in truthiness.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#38

Post by sbarre »

newswriter99 wrote: post #24
zzalpha wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But equally there might be a problem with what you're writing if you're attracting trolls. I very much disagree with that. Let's just take the CBC as an example. It's an excellent news organization that writes top notch journalism. And for any topic even remotely controversial (e.g., anything related to the indigenous population in Canada), they've had to disable the comment section because it's such a godawful cessp…

Vice is nowhere remotely close to journalistic professionalism. I'd argue they bait trolls.

Are you thinking of Vice from 15 years ago when it was just a magazine?

Things have changed, you should look at what kind of reporting they are actually doing these days, it might surprise you (in a good way).

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#39

Post by AbrahamParangi »

I think many people have realized that the costs (filtering & moderation) vs. benefits (community engagement) of comment sections just don't make sense for most websites.

I suspect that for comment sections to be good the users need to actually be invested in the 'forum' they're posting in. Without any skin in the game (reputation or fear of moderation) there is little incentive for most users to add value and the system becomes dominated by 'low value' posts (like trolls, flamewars, spambots, etc.).

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#40

Post by colordrops »

kevinburke wrote: post #29
colordrops wrote: post #16

Many sites have been closing their comments section. It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message. Rather than finding a technical solution or one that involves moderation, these sites just shut the community out and become a broadcast medium once again. A notable removal of a comments section was NPR's shutdown right around the time of the Democratic National Convention. Th…

> It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message. Insofar as "control the message" means "we are tired of anonymous people in our comments section doxxing our authors and other people, and vile, racist attacks on our authors and groups of people", then yes, this is an attempt to "control the message." > Since NPR clearly had a pro-Hillary agenda, the comments section had to go…

> anonymous people in our comments section doxxing our authors and other people, and vile, racist attacks on our authors and groups of people", then yes, this is an attempt to "control the message."

That is a cop-out and not true for all comment sections.

> There's no evidence for this, and it's unrelated to the topic.

That's a huge cop-out statement to shutdown conversation, and this is about as on-topic as possible. Who are you to decide what is on-topic?

Post reply on HN