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Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

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Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#91

Post by brennen »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #78
caseysoftware wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much of the media was shocked SHOCKED by Brexit, the election of Trump, Sarkozy's loss, the fall of Merkel, and the rise of Le Pen, maybe they should pay more attention to the comments..

The media were not SHOCKED, they expressed shock in an attempt to get more attention/views.

I really haven't seen much evidence that media professionals expressing shock at, for example, Brexit and Trump's election are engaged in some strong form of deception. There's a reasonable set of critiques about media incentives and behavior here, but I think this is a case where cynicism of this kind can obscure observable reality: The majority of people really didn't expect these outcomes.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#92

Post by rokosbasilisk »

kuschku wrote: post #51
caseysoftware wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how much of the media was shocked SHOCKED by Brexit, the election of Trump, Sarkozy's loss, the fall of Merkel, and the rise of Le Pen, maybe they should pay more attention to the comments..

The "fall" of Merkel? You mean, she went from approval rates of 74% to about 50%?

Probably in reference to the reversal of hijabs and beginning of her reversing some immigration policies.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#93

Post by brennen »

lmm wrote: post #32
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.

> Reddit seems to be doing fine now

Hrm. I resisted this view for quite a while, but as far as I can tell in 2016 reddit is a pathological and destructive ocean of trash fire lunacy which incidentally hosts a few islands of relative sanity.

Of course it's hard to generalize about any cultural venue at the scale of reddit. But it really seems to a lot of observers that the pathology has by far outstripped its prosocial functions.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#94

Post by kevinwang »

dba7dba wrote: post #82
swalsh wrote: post #60

Hacker News after all these years has managed to maintain a pretty high standard when it comes to comment quality (my comments excluded, of course, they are of much lower quality). A large part of that is it was started with a pretty small group that set the tone and quality, and it has always been very aggressive towards new commenters in the form of limiting down-votes, and chastising lower quality comments. That b…

Would Ycombinator be willing to start a separate product with its ranking/reputation system to allow other sites to host comments section? Comments section allows discussion and debates, which is what Democracy is built on.

I'd guess that a big part of the quality control here comes from efforts of the moderators, so I don't think that replicating the ranking system would replicate the quality of discourse.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#95

Post by gulperxcx »

seanalltogether wrote: post #62
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #39

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 sy…

This actually a good argument toward shifting commenting into a paid subscription offering. Give access to the site free of ads and allow you to comment on articles.

The standard charge should be $0.02 per comment.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#96

Post by aphextron »

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.

Nonsense. Literally any comment section on any news website will be filled with people spouting off their random insanity because it's simply a platform. The actual content of the article rarely even matters to these people.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#98

Post by barrkel »

leavingreddit wrote: post #6

In my humble opinion perhaps websites might benefit simply from more sorting filters on comments. Reddit allows sorting by most upvoted and most controversial which is cool. However I wonder if sorting by the reading age of the comment for example might work. Perhaps creating a set of words which are inflammatory and sorting by most negative comments to most positive comments. Perhaps combining filters could be const…

Simple metrics like these sound a lot like they could be gamed.

There might be something useful in spam detection, but it's a fine line between moderation and censorship.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#99

Post by djtriptych »

newswriter99 wrote: post #83
djtriptych wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, who's allowed to be 'alternative'?

Anyone can be "alternative" but it's impossible for a well-off Canadian who hires writes specifically from upper-class NYC and LA to be legit alternative. My point is, this is just like when Starbucks tried to copy indie coffee shops, or when record labels tried to produce "underground" bands, or when Walmart attempted to sell "hand-crafted" and "artisan" products. The premise makes the end result impossible.

And who are indie coffee shops, underground bands, and artisan craftspeople copying?

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#100

Post by aphextron »

weewooweewoo wrote: post #89

There's something to the idea that comments are "letters to the editor", as I believe that the biggest incentive for people to comment is when they feel that they have something to contribute. The problem, of course, is that hateful reasoning is usually something to 'novel' to contribute. It is especially easy to contribute something novel when you skim an article and you don't see any indication that the article is…

>There's something to the idea that comments are "letters to the editor", as I believe that the biggest incentive for people to comment is when they feel that they have something to contribute.

I don't think that analogy holds up, though. People are free to sit down and write a well thought out email to the author of an article if they have a specific point of disagreement. The problem with comment sections is that people often times aren't even reading the story or providing constructive commentary on it. The page just becomes a platform for them to go off on whatever nonsensical theories they have and troll people.

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