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Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

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Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#141

Post by s73ver_ »

hello_there wrote: post #40

Here's a slightly off-topic dream about online comments: In an ideal comment system I believe that articles, comments and moderation events should come from three different, decentralized streams (like Atom) that the end user can subscribe to individually and that are joined at the end users client. That would would provide transparency to the moderation process, ability to comment anywhere, and it would allow modera…

Why would I, as a site owner, want to cede control of the comments that are associated with my site? If, for example, a comment was just a string of racial slurs, there's no way in hell I would want that associated with my site, and I would want that deleted as soon as possible, regardless if you would want to see it.

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#142

Post by heroprotagonist »

I love Mozilla's efforts and I think this is an important area to improve.

But, as petty and selfish as it sounds, I wish it were built in my development language of choice. Then I could modify and use it myself, or contribute, without that irrational dirty feeling.

I know, node is very popular, and no disrespect to you if you use it. It's a personal failing. I just can't put my personal time into it any more. When I see a great project I get excited, and search out the source to see what it's written in. Then I often feel disappointed. Maybe I need to gain some flexibility.

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#143

Post by thaumaturgy »

jedberg wrote: post #110
thaumaturgy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subreddits don't exist in a vacuum though (and I say this as a big fan of some smaller subreddits with pretty awesome communities, like /r/vandwellers). So even if we set aside the question of self-ownership of data vs. embedding, WaPo would look at this as an opportunity to either create their own culture, with their own weirdos and brilliant people, or to start with Reddit's and try to moderate their way towards th…

> would Reddit ca. 2004 had done that instead of building their own? Maybe, but probably not, largely because they could not fully control the content, like WaPo could do today. In this day and age, commenting on the internet is pretty mature, and the best systems have years of data to feed their anti-spam algorithms. Just like you can run your own mail server today, most people don't because it's a pain in the butt…

Heh, I run my own mail server.

I don't think Slashdot offered the kind of users that early Reddit founders wanted to seed their userbase with. But, I can't prove that, so I'll have to take your word for it that Reddit would have been open to the idea except for the quality of the imagined software.

I've been purposely gentle because I'm a long-time Reddit user -- I remember when comments were turned on for the first time -- and although I still think the main folks behind Reddit are pretty cool and built something really big that has had incalculable impact, I also have a lot of old axes to grind and I don't want your honest question to turn into an opportunity for me to do that.

But.

Your response here has essentially been, "everything's fine, you can just moderate the content, we provide the tools to do that. Maybe this is just a marketing problem."

It's not just a marketing problem.

Moderators have publicly castigated Reddit admins on multiple occasions over the tooling they have available (example from quick search: https://np.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/3byxtg/regardi...). Articles titled "Reddit is tearing itself apart" have been published on sites with widespread readership (http://gizmodo.com/reddit-is-tearing-itself-apart-1789406294). There was that GameOfTrolls subreddit that openly harassed other subreddits and Reddit administration plainly ignored it for quite a while until they finally stepped over some fine line in the site rules.

A publication like WaPo would certainly be a target for that kind of abuse. I would have to assume that whoever is involved in making decisions about comments on their site must be at least a little bit aware of the potential for abuse here. They were one of the first (or the first?) to have their own profile page. They grok Reddit, and they decided not to have Reddit embedded into their site. That's just not a marketing problem.

Reddit administration made a decision early on to take a hands-off approach to community management. One of the consequences of that is that a significant part of Reddit's community is the sort of culture that sites like the Washington Post don't want to have to spend their time dealing with, and the moderation tools Reddit provides are just not good enough to make up for it.

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#144

Post by s73ver_ »

unescape wrote: post #98
ZenoArrow wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but have you considered the downsides? Imagine you know someone in the public eye, let's say a musician, with their own website. They enable comments, and site now has comments all over it that they have no editorial control over whatsoever. People are posting a high amount of offensive content. What do you advise that this musician does?

The musician can display whatever they want on their website; they don't have to host content they don't like. In the "dream" commenting system, the comments are independent; you can apply your own filters and fetch comments from sources the site owner may not approve of.

But they're still associated with that site, and that musician.

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#145

Post by [deleted] »

intopieces wrote: post #65
mobilefriendly wrote: post #57

Mozilla -- the organization that fired its CEO because it disagreed with a political donation he made in California -- lacks credibility when it talks about building an "open society".

"Brendan Eich was not fired. After his appointment, there was backlash from the Mozilla Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did. The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation; they did not "remove him because of his views." If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place. Resignation (after only 11 days in the CEO role) became the only viable p…

[deleted]

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#146

Post by s73ver_ »

hello_there wrote: post #105
ZenoArrow wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but have you considered the downsides? Imagine you know someone in the public eye, let's say a musician, with their own website. They enable comments, and site now has comments all over it that they have no editorial control over whatsoever. People are posting a high amount of offensive content. What do you advise that this musician does?

> Imagine you know someone in the public eye, let's say a musician, with their own website. They enable comments In my mind it would be the users, not the site owners that would enable the comments. > People are posting a high amount of offensive content. What do you advise that this musician does? My advice in this case would be to create a moderator stream that the end users can subscribe to. Perhaps some mechanism…

Isn't this now Mastodon? If it's not actually connected to the site in question?

"My advice in this case would be to create a moderator stream that the end users can subscribe to."

That sounds like a pretty complex thing to do, which doesn't solve the problem of, "The comments on my site are overrun with people posting racial slurs."

"In this case the site owners would be able to moderate comments through voluntary cooperation with its users, but it wouldn't be able to censor opinions that it didn't agree with, because the end users would always be in control of how its stream is filtered and would always be able to verify that on-topic posts aren't censored."

I don't believe that's actually a problem, though. You can always go make your own site if you want your voice heard.

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#147

Post by unescape »

s73ver_ wrote: post #144
unescape wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The musician can display whatever they want on their website; they don't have to host content they don't like. In the "dream" commenting system, the comments are independent; you can apply your own filters and fetch comments from sources the site owner may not approve of.

But they're still associated with that site, and that musician.

Only in the sense that someone who makes a Wix site that says "Neil Young Sux" is associated with Neil Young.

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#148

Post by chiefofgxbxl »

seanwilson wrote: post #130
Pxtl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a mix of Reddit google's network algorithm could work - don't just upvote/downvote the post, but lend the commenter's credibility. So upvotes from hordes of poo-flinging monkeys aren't weighted as heavily from upvotes from credible sources. Then the hack: this is a newspaper. They have no reason to be fair. Give community moderators super-credibility. So they can upvote people and not just give their co…

> It seems like a mix of Reddit google's network algorithm could work - don't just upvote/downvote the post, but lend the commenter's credibility. So upvotes from hordes of poo-flinging monkeys aren't weighted as heavily from upvotes from credible sources. Are there site that do that? I know hackernews limits your voting abilities until you get so much karma. Sounds like some variation of the above ideas would work g…

> Are there site that do that?

Not news or commenting related, but a site like Newgrounds [0] (i.e. flash games and videos) has this feature. As you participate in the community more and contribute high-quality ratings, enforcement, etc. you gain more influence, making your votes carry more weight. Therefore an account that has been involved with the site for some time may carry more weight than a few new troll accounts.

It seems like a good model, but may still need occasional moderator intervention to prevent abuse here and there.

[0] http://www.newgrounds.com/

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#149

Post by s73ver_ »

ArchReaper wrote: post #2

Why should anyone care? I don't see anything technically novel or interesting in this. Edit: I'm not disparaging this, I'm asking a question...

You asked it in a pretty disparaging way, though. The way you phrased that, it seemed like you weren't asking in good faith, but were rather sarcastically saying it, with the underlying tone being "this is stupid."

Re: Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform

#150

Post by unescape »

s73ver_ wrote: post #140
unescape wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a step in the right direction, but why hand control to the newsroom as opposed to the user?

It is the newsroom's site.

Then this is evidence that comments should not be on the site. It's not the place of the newsroom to control discussion.
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