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Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

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Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#171

Post by cderwin »

rezashirazian wrote: post #86
seanalltogether wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I think a notable exception to this is comments on the wall street journal. They are typically well-informed professionals having reasonable opinions who take the time to write in-depth comments -- not unlike this site, I suppose. And of course commenting is gated on having a paid subscription to the magazine, and I believe there is an additional paid membership that gets ones comments promoted.

I don't know if things are still like this though -- I haven't had a subscription for several years.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#172

Post by kevinburke »

scythe wrote: post #140
kevinburke wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when the conservatives started winning, it had to be shut down. There's zero evidence for this. Please read the article.

I read the whole article. I don't believe you for a second, though.

The main complaint listed by Vice in the article was that the comments section inevitably led to low quality debate, and commenters frequently had to be banned for posting racist, sexist comments, and/or releasing private information about Vice's writers or other people in the comment section. Those seem like perfectly valid reasons to shut it down, and seem orthogonal to "conservatives started winning," however you want to define that.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#173

Post by jrockway »

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…

I don't think Reddit helps much. I don't use my real name on Reddit anymore, so I have no qualms about making a controversial comment. If it gets too downvoted, I can delete the comment and limit the losses.

It's also super-easy to get comment karma. For example, AskReddit has a pretty much weekly repeating set of questions, and since it's a default subreddit, lots of people vote there. Find last week's top answer and repost it. (I got the highest-voted comment on Reddit once, via AskReddit. A few weeks later, someone reposted my comment and got more upvotes than I did! And more gold!)

If you want to troll on Reddit, you will have no problems doing so. The only thing that makes certain subreddits usable are diligent mods. (Though sometimes they are too diligent. I am banned from AskReddit for apparently posting something that was in the same format as a phone number, which is "personal information". My appeal was ignored.)

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#174

Post by PravlageTiem »

Did the pixels offend you? Block everyone who disagrees with you.

Now you know why no one you knew voted for Trump.

If the left is obsessed with turning their entire belief system into a remake of the 1930s radio model (One story teller allowed, millions of listeners), then we will get 1930s results.

Meanwhile, I'll be using the internet the way Jesus 2.0 intended and engaging in robust anonymous communication networks to inoculate myself from feinting pearl-clutchers and other paid government emotion hackers.

I'll give you one guess which ecosystem will survive when the powers that be realized their precious fourth estate no longer works like it did in the 1930s.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#175

Post by baobrain »

astrodust wrote: post #116
newswriter99 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rolling Stone lost all credibility after publishing that fake rape story.

One story, all credibility, huh? You must live in a world where nobody is credible. The New York Times has suffered hits to its credibility, fake photographers, plagiarism and such, but that doesn't necessarily negate all the work done by their talented staff. There's still good work being done there despite those setbacks. It's a fallacy to instantly discount everything as without merit, putting it on the same level…

I would highly recommend checking out the Columbia school of journalism's analysis.[0]

While other publications have had lapses in journalistic integrity, rolling stones case is especially egregious. Along every step of the way, the writer and her editors violated the basics of journalistic integrity, like not fact checking and trusting one side.

[0]http://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation...

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#176

Post by reality_czech »

kevinburke wrote: post #165
reality_czech wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. use the anonymous comment system to post fake threats against yourself and/or racist rants 2. use the comments from #1 to argue that anonymous comment sections should be shut down 3. profit!

Internet writers are busy enough without having to maintain fake racist diatribes against themselves in their own comment sections. I don't see what "profit" any writer gets from shutting down the comments section; they clearly wanted to keep it open, despite the numerous accounts they had to ban. This is ludicrous.

From the perspective of someone who wants to create a narrative, and doesn't care overmuch about the truth, allowing comments on articles is just a nuissance. If they express a point of view contrary to the narrative, you have to waste time moderating them down so they can't be seen, or (in extreme cases) actually replying to them. So you just post a fake comment or two, scream "think of the children!!!" and shut it down. Or you just wait for that one mentally ill guy to post something crazy and just point to that. Same result.

It's the same tactic news sources use in other contexts, too. You want to create a narrative against candidate or political party X. So find a really loathsome person who supports X and run a story about them. Perfect. Never mind that most people affiliated with X woud never associate with that person.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#177

Post by reality_czech »

ilugaslifg wrote: post #169
reality_czech wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the media were in a bubble where everyone they talked to had the same views as themselves.

That is absolutely a true thing you can say about the media and the election. They came to believe that Trump would not win the election, by being in a bubble where everyone they talked to had the same views as themselves. But that is a totally different point than, and is actually logically incompatible with, the assertion that they privately believed that Trump _would_ win the election, but expressed otherwise to t…

OK, that's fair. I think that most of the media believed that Clinton would win. It was actually quite creepy seeing all the glowing tributes to her life, and upcoming presidency. I still have a special commemorative edition of Newsweek from November 8, 2016, celebrating "Hillary Clinton's Historic Journey to the White House." I think I am going to keep this for a while.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#178

Post by I_HALF_CATS »

sbarre wrote: post #38
newswriter99 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vice is nowhere remotely close to journalistic professionalism. I'd argue they bait trolls.

Are you thinking of Vice from 15 years ago when it was just a magazine? Things have changed, you should look at what kind of reporting they are actually doing these days, it might surprise you (in a good way).

Vice has no journalism code of ethics. They have no official fact-checking process. I tried fact-checking Vice and it didn't go so well:

https://notvice.com/fact-checking-vice-a-fiction-2d482100116...

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#179

Post by Jordrok »

zigzigzag wrote: post #156
woodsier wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

No, because the problem isn't really technical. Whilst Vice could probably improve the quality of their commenting by putting more effort into the software, the real problem is that they were receiving political opinions from a camp they didn't like much. The article doesn't really try to hide it: Without moderators or fancy algorithms, they are prone to anarchy Anarchy?! I thought anarchy involved Mad Max style gunf…

I'm not really a fan of removing comments sections entirely - proper moderation is possible, it just takes more time and manpower than most sites are willing to commit.

I think you're being extremely disingenuous here though. Have you actually hung around any of the poorly moderated comment sections on major news sites? Most of them are filled with flaming piles of word vomit, not the kind of enlightened right wing perspectives you claim are being censored.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#180

Post by forgottenpass »

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?

If the latter, it does invite the question of why.

It's simply not worth the effort. Forget about the political topics you mention for a second. Changing minds in that realm through conversation is know to be hard. Look at something easier like conveying factual information about non-controversial topics.

Even in that case, if a topic is complicated enough that an early 20's newbie can't pick it up from a 1000-word medium essay, forget it. People who engage in trying to inform are fighting a constant uphill battle with no upside if they succeed.

Now pile the baggage back on of trying to disagree the "conventional wisdom" of a social bubble. A few try, most give up, and the spiteful join the jokers in trolling.

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