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Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

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Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#141

Post by wav-part »

rabidrat wrote: post #132
spott wrote: 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…

> Transitive, persistent reputation is key to solving this issue Reddit/HN/etc make the username behind each comment as small and discreet as possible. As much as I dislike the low content/cruft ratio of BBForum, its design emphasizes each commenter's login, and registration date. This helps at least a bit, as even visitors can readily notice the correlation between certain avatars and the quality of their posts. Whe…

This has much simpler solution: user tagging. I think Reddit Enhancement Suite has it. I am working on a C Reddit/HN client (basically RES on steroids) that would implement these user remebering features such as usertags, usersets, bad/good users, total_upvote/downvotes_given_to_a_user etc.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#142

Post by ksk »

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.

> But equally there might be a problem with what you're writing if you're attracting trolls. This is certainly true of Vice.

Can you explain your reasoning behind that?

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#143

Post by e40 »

notatoad wrote: post #134
spott wrote: 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…

Interestingly, this was almost the exact strategy that brought down digg back in the day. They tried to partner with some news sites to auto-submit each of their stories to digg, and their users revolted. Of course, they had a looser structure than reddit does and so the auto-posted "professional" posts began to dominate the main feed, while reddit has the opportunity to keep them within their own subreddit.

Posting to Digg's front page and a new subreddit are completely different beasts, though.

EDIT: a non-default subreddit.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#144

Post by slang800 »

newswriter99 wrote: post #11

Considering Vice is run by upper-class WASPs who write as if they grew up underprivileged, it shouldn't be a surprise that most of its readers (actually working-class types) habitually call them out on their flawed, bias-filled stance. I'm not trying to be contrarian here. The biggest issue with VICE is that it pretends to be alternative the same way Lady GaGa pretends to be alternative.

They're not WASPs - the closest label you could put on them would be "hipster" or "liberal". Plus, most of the writers don't even work at VICE. Articles are contracted out to freelance writers so they don't need to pay benefits or provide office space. Only dev, strategy, management, analytics, marketing, and video/tv production are kept in-house.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#145

Post by dredmorbius »

throwanem wrote: post #104
rezashirazian wrote: post #86

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.

Metafilter does this. It's surprisingly effective.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#146

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

HN is very actively moderated by dang and sctb. It's mostly soft moderation, but it's pretty effective.

Lack of high-sticky features (no "notifications" indicator, e.g.) also help.

Founding cohort and community also help.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#147

Post by zigzigzag »

int_19h wrote: post #136
snowpanda wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hacker News after all these years has managed to maintain a pretty high standard when it comes to comment quality It's easy to maintain quality when the majority of your visitors have the same political and social beliefs. Basic income, renewable energy, income inequality... It gets really old for people living outside of the Silicon Valley bubble.

Are you implying that NH is limiting its audience to politically agreeable, or that those who disagree self-censor themselves and move to other platforms? If the latter, it does invite the question of why. Is it impossible to disagree on basic income, renewable energy, income inequality etc without reducing your comment quality below the bar that is acceptable here?

It's to do with story selection.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#148

Post by [deleted] »

int_19h wrote: post #136
snowpanda wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hacker News after all these years has managed to maintain a pretty high standard when it comes to comment quality It's easy to maintain quality when the majority of your visitors have the same political and social beliefs. Basic income, renewable energy, income inequality... It gets really old for people living outside of the Silicon Valley bubble.

Are you implying that NH is limiting its audience to politically agreeable, or that those who disagree self-censor themselves and move to other platforms? If the latter, it does invite the question of why. Is it impossible to disagree on basic income, renewable energy, income inequality etc without reducing your comment quality below the bar that is acceptable here?

[deleted]

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#149

Post by zigzigzag »

thinkloop wrote: post #77
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..

Those were shocking events. Scientific polls, liquid prediction markets and experts, all predicted different outcomes. It would have been irresponsible to take different positions. Either the tools we have to measure these things are inadequate, and must be improved. People simply changed their minds as the events drew near. Or we happened to hit the underdog outcomes (80% chance of Hillary is still 1 in 5 for Trump)…

And the polls, markets and experts were all wrong. Apparently they aren't so scientific, liquid or expert after all.

Actually, a few journalists who spent serious time hitting the streets outside London concluded that Brexit would win or at least was quite likely, just by talking to people. They were largely ignored because they weren't "experts", just people talking to other people. John Harris being an example of that.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#150

Post by zigzigzag »

ebbv wrote: post #34
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…

HN, Slashdot and Reddit frequently have thousands of posts on a single story and many of the posts are excellent.

The keys are that all three sites are dedicated to discussion: that's practically all they do (plus story aggregation). So they are optimised for it. A simple example of how they differ from most newspaper comment sections: threaded replies. Posts that span the page width. Karma tracking.

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