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Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

vice.com

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Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard charge should be $0.02 per comment.

Even at $.10 a comment, trolling would still be incredibly inexpensive compared to many other hobbies.

What if you added a downvote multiplier, so if you get 5 downvotes it becomes $.50? With a max neg of score of -10. And same for downvoter. And you get meta mods who watch these mods to try to keep things from wratcheting in a runaway manner.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model of Reddit as a multistory building with a basement is flawed from the outset. It's more like a building in n-dimensional hyperspace. No matter what room you're in, the doors that lead to every other room, as well as to the street outside, are never more than a footstep away. The same is true of the Web as a whole, at least until we allow governments and other special interests to start nailing various doors…

A building in n-dimensional hyperspace where a large group of violent assholes are on the other side of ~50% of all doors.

Who can't come through the door to the room you're in unless you invite them.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#123
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at $.10 a comment, trolling would still be incredibly inexpensive compared to many other hobbies.

It should however help eradicate industrial scale trolling by dedicated actors.

Some industrial scale trolling, perhaps.

On the other hand, trolls and coordinated political campaigns tend to be a lot more willing to spend money to pursue their causes than people that just want to add a relevant anecdote or express their approval, so it might skew the balance of comments more towards trolling and brigading.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, if people pay for the privilege of commenting, they will feel entitled and less likely to self-moderate. It would make more sense to grant commenting privileges to individuals who have engaged with the site previously and are in good standing. Much like the Product Hunt.

> if people pay for the privilege of commenting, they will feel entitled and less likely to self-moderate Not if getting banned means they have to buy a new account to post again.

Yeah, this is the something awful forums model. It's not perfect but better than most places.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A building in n-dimensional hyperspace where a large group of violent assholes are on the other side of ~50% of all doors.

Who can't come through the door to the room you're in unless you invite them.

This does not actually seem to describe the state of the internet generally. I gravitate more and more towards little pocket-universe parts of the network that are essentially invisible, but (apropos of the article) things like comment sections are quite often the functional equivalent of a giant neon ASSHOLES WELCOME sign above the door.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#126
post #120

I think there actually might be a market here for Reddit... Create a subreddit for a news site, and each new article on the news site automatically gets a new post on the subreddit. Embed the relevant post on the news site. Since "karma" is transitive across Reddit and across news sites, users are slightly less likely to troll. You could also do this with some sort of reputation system across websites (Disqus could a…

>Create a subreddit for a news site, and each new article on the news site automatically gets a new post on the subreddit.

Amusingly, https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews/

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#127
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at $.10 a comment, trolling would still be incredibly inexpensive compared to many other hobbies.

What if you added a downvote multiplier, so if you get 5 downvotes it becomes $.50? With a max neg of score of -10. And same for downvoter. And you get meta mods who watch these mods to try to keep things from wratcheting in a runaway manner.

I don't want to pay just because people disagree with me though. For instance, I've had relatively innocuous comments get downvoted on Reddit because it's an unpopular opinion. A great way to get downvotes is to find a thread where people are complaining about speed locks in apps and post "studies have shown that distracted driving is at least as dangerous as drinking and driving."

You'll almost instantly get downvoted to at least -5, despite the verifiable truth of the statement.

It would make vote brigading really attractive as well. Imagine if /r/TheDonald users could have caused a financial impact to anyone just by downvoting their comments. Reddit would have been a nightmare.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#128
post #120

I think there actually might be a market here for Reddit... Create a subreddit for a news site, and each new article on the news site automatically gets a new post on the subreddit. Embed the relevant post on the news site. Since "karma" is transitive across Reddit and across news sites, users are slightly less likely to troll. You could also do this with some sort of reputation system across websites (Disqus could a…

It does sound like the best option available.

Is anyone out there aware of a solution that currently exists (and is available to people like you and I?).

Reddit has made it easy to embed comments on a site since last year: https://redditblog.com/2015/03/23/announcing-embeddable-comm...

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#129
post #12

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.

I think that assertion looks good on paper but isn't fair in practice. Other than communities that have significant friction to get in -- e.g. $5 for a Metafilter membership -- comments are going to fall prey to the dynamic that afflicts online reviews: people who are pissed are often more motivated to make it known, compared to those who are merely satisfied [0]. Whatever one might think of Vice overall, the model i…

That's giving too much credit to the journalists for the comment streams being terrible. Most of the terrible comments are not because people read the article and are angry about how good it was, I'd say a very very small number are.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#130
post #120

I think there actually might be a market here for Reddit... Create a subreddit for a news site, and each new article on the news site automatically gets a new post on the subreddit. Embed the relevant post on the news site. Since "karma" is transitive across Reddit and across news sites, users are slightly less likely to troll. You could also do this with some sort of reputation system across websites (Disqus could a…

> Since "karma" is transitive across Reddit and across news sites, users are slightly less likely to troll. You could also do this with some sort of reputation system across websites (Disqus could add in something like that).

While technically accurate, "slight less likely" isn't statistical significant when it comes to trolling.

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