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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

#161

Post by viraptor »

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…

Slashdot uses (used?) meta moderation. You could review votes others did - not the value itself, but the category. "Do you agree this post is (interesting/insightful/funny/...)?"

Not sure how the results were used though.

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

#162

Post by s73ver_ »

unescape wrote: post #160
s73ver_ wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't comment on their site? I mean if you're looking for discussion online, there are thousands of places to go. But this is specifically about the comment sections they provide. It seems entirely reasonable that a room they provide should be subject to their rules, and one violating those rules should be shown the door.

My observation is that Mozilla Talk does nothing to advance the decentralized Web, so why is it a good thing?

Just because something doesn't advance your pet cause doesn't mean it's not good.

The decentralized web does nothing to advance universal health care, so why is it a good thing?

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

#163

Post by Retra »

codingdave wrote: post #138
jedberg wrote: post #87

Reddit has had embeddable comment threads for over two years. It was a feature I actually worked on nine years ago, but the standards weren't there at the time to make it work with voting. I know I'm super biased, but I still find Reddit comments the easiest to read and follow (HN is a pretty close second, especially after they added comment collapsing). Is it really just bad marketing it on Reddit's part that keeps…

To be honest, it is because reddit still feels... frivolous? It doesn't have the toxicity that it did a couple years ago, nor the shallowness of its nothing-but-cat-pictures reputation. But neither is it a good platform for gaining customers or revenue. It is a place to gain traffic, but traffic without revenue is not the goal for most organizations. Now, if reddit traffic converted, I'd look deeper at it - but when…

I would expect that's because conversions are antithetical to high quality discussion (and thus site loyalty).

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

#164

Post by unescape »

s73ver_ wrote: post #159
unescape wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't solve the problem of, "The comments on my site are overrun with people posting racial slurs." I think you're misunderstanding the proposal. Comments and moderation are independent of the site, not on the site. If distributed commenting and moderation is too complex to implement, then we need to move to network designs that make it simpler.

Commenting systems are setup and enabled by the admins of the site. Otherwise you're just talking about Twitter or Mastodon.

We're talking about something like Twitter or Mastodon but (a) can be found using the original URL of the site, as in IPFS or content-addressable networking; and (b) uses distributed opt-in moderation, meta-moderation, and filtering; like a decentralized AdBlock.

It's something that doesn't actually exist yet, but maybe will.

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

#165

Post by Splatter »

jamiek88 wrote: post #124
sampl wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It creates an echo-chamber, of course... but ultimately, that's what people want. I want to eat ice cream every day, but I also want to feel good and be healthy. Let's give people a little credit--if they're aware of their biases and are given tools to overcome them, a lot of folks might make the right choice.

Meanwhile the right merrily balkanises and wins elections over and over because their people are whipped up by their echo chambers about death panels or pizza shop pedophiles or made up controversy du jour. The opposition can take the moral high road all the way to irrelevance. As a counter point. The NYT's job is to sell subscriptions. Faux 'balance' isn't going to sell one subscription to a Trump voter.

Or perhaps the right wins local, state, and federal elections because a large portion of the country doesn't like the solutions the left proposes.

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

#166

Post by unescape »

s73ver_ wrote: post #162
unescape wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My observation is that Mozilla Talk does nothing to advance the decentralized Web, so why is it a good thing?

Just because something doesn't advance your pet cause doesn't mean it's not good. The decentralized web does nothing to advance universal health care, so why is it a good thing?

I'm just going to point out that Mozilla and the NSF recently offered $2M for ideas to decentralize the web.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/06/21/2-million-prize-dec...

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

#167

Post by interstitial »

sampl wrote: post #115
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 creates an echo-chamber, of course... but ultimately, that's what people want. I want to eat ice cream every day, but I also want to feel good and be healthy. Let's give people a little credit--if they're aware of their biases and are given tools to overcome them, a lot of folks might make the right choice.

Na, you confuse bias with self-esteem. As long as it makes you feel good to think you are better than someone else, the bubble works.

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

#168

Post by Jimmie_Rustle »

AgentME wrote: post #156
thinbeige wrote: post #18

After reading this article over and over I am still clueless. What is this all about? Feature-wise it doesn't sound better than a comment system from HN, Reddit or StackExchange. Besides, Mozilla is really lacking communicational skills. This blog post feels like the documentation at MDN, tedious and unclear.

It sounds like it's a ready-to-go free open-source project like Disqus that you can host yourself instead of trusting an outside company with your user data and relying on them to keep it up. I thought the "Here’s what makes Talk different" section with the bolded topic lines was pretty to-the-point.

There are lots of open source comment systems, those bullets do not describe any unique features or give strong enough reasons to use Talk over existing alternatives

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

#169

Post by interstitial »

s73ver_ wrote: post #127
inetknght wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people want isn't necessarily what they need . When people's needs are satisfied, they want more of that . So let's satisfy their needs instead. Echo chambers are ultimately self-defeating as they bring on more divisiveness and intolerance.

Needs aren't as profitable.

Needs + Rent-seeking + monopoly = risk-free profits

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

#170

Post by chiefofgxbxl »

devinhelton wrote: post #22
aaron-lebo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how you could ever hope to have productive debate on say an article about global warming. It's not a local topic, it's a difficult topic, there's millions of regular people and trolls around the world waiting to blab about something they don't have any clue about. It's hard for me to imagine what a comment on a Washington Post article could add to the article or to anyone's knowledge. It's user involvement f…

I think the biggest thing forums and comment systems need to do is to ban tedious comments. On subjects that have been debated to death, it is really annoying to see all the comments for a new article just be repeated talking points that I have seen a million times before. I would suggest sites have a single mega-threads for debating hot topics. Then make a rule that for any new article, you can only write a comment…

A ubiquitous example of this is the Facebook "Like" button, which the creator of which said she wanted to "solve the redundant problem":

> So how did the like button come about? What problem were you trying to solve? I was trying to solve what we called the redundant problem. So for example, if you write "We're getting married!" all the comments used to say "Congratulations" over and over again. I found that really aesthetically ugly, plus, every time someone did say something heartfelt, the post was hard to find among all the other redundant ones. [0]

I find a similar situation on YouTube, where commenters don't add any insight or discussion to the video, they just say something like, "Great job!" or "Beautiful music!". Not a problem in itself, but when you have hundreds or thousands of these comments it leaves out real room for critique, questions, etc.

GitHub has a similar feature with reactions to issues.

However, one small concern I have is that such reactions might "dumb down" user/viewer participation and give the impression that using a reaction is all you need to do to have an opinion. Real discourse requires thought and reason, and not just slapping an emotional sticker on something.

[0] https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/mbag3a/the-inventor-of-th...

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