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Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

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Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#201

Post by forgottenpass »

phaemon wrote: post #195
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.

You think that because I'd like to see a basic income, care about renewable energy and income equality, that I must be living in the Silicon Valley bubble? Is that genuinely what you think?

You think that because I'd like to see a basic income, care about renewable energy and income equality, that I must be living in the Silicon Valley bubble?

Nope, you're not "in a bubble" for holding those positions. I see parent poster as listing some things that happen to be popular in the bubble, even if they're also generic american left. When discussing a "bubble", it doesn't matter what the positions happen to be, but how they're discussed, how uniform opinions are, how well they understand where their own positions fit into the contemporary political spectrum of people who share their government, how dissent is handled, etc...

Is that genuinely* what you think?*

Now, this remark is how I know you're in the bubble.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#202

Post by fil_a_del_fee_a »

throwaway420 wrote: post #103
colordrops wrote: post #16

Many sites have been closing their comments section. It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message. Rather than finding a technical solution or one that involves moderation, these sites just shut the community out and become a broadcast medium once again. A notable removal of a comments section was NPR's shutdown right around the time of the Democratic National Convention. Th…

I hate this trend of getting rid of comments for many reasons, but honestly it's usually because the comments section in many publications has some of the most insightful ideas. Yes, you'll occasionally have to see some idiot spouting off or see some spam, but I think the cost is worth it. Look at Techdirt for example: great articles, and actually insightful and funny comments that add to the discussion. Every articl…

Same goes for HN. I typically read the headline, skim the article, and go straight for the comments!

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#203

Post by darpa_escapee »

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 willing to bet that many of the comments that enraged them the most weren't particularly stupid or even racist, but rather belonged to a part of the political spectrum that Vice's writers wished they could make go away for real. If there's one thing 2016 shows it's the unlimited capacity for people to paint political views that they don't share of any kind, regardless of reasonableness or validity, as "racist" or "bigoted".

Comments with relatively unpopular political opinions on the site breeds discussion and views.

Comments that are literally "kill all ___" don't, scare advertisers and put your brand at risk.

Most of those comments fall in the latter camp. Look at any comments section. There's a thread on my local paper's site right now about a bicycle theft: "This n* needs to get special treatment in the big house. Confiscate the home and demo it eventually they'll turn ____town into one big lot and then can start a rebuilding in the area."

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#204

Post by zzalpha »

jagermo wrote: post #186
zzalpha wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But equally there might be a problem with what you're writing if you're attracting trolls. I very much disagree with that. Let's just take the CBC as an example. It's an excellent news organization that writes top notch journalism. And for any topic even remotely controversial (e.g., anything related to the indigenous population in Canada), they've had to disable the comment section because it's such a godawful cessp…

but you could get rid of that, couldn't you? Switch to "moderate first if user does not have a high enough reputation" for a while. Idiot commenters want their posts to be seen, they thrive on the chaos. Take that away from them and they will move on. Yes, you need a few people willing to go through the filth, but you will get a better online presence out of it.

Or don't waste your time and kill comments entirely.

Demonstrate the cost/benefit advantage of having to police these garbage piles and maybe I'll buy it. But I don't believe that most people read the Times or CBC or WaPo for the comment section. More likely they read those outlets despite them.

I agree with Vice. Leave the discussion to dedicated services like Reddit, HN, Twitter, Facebook, etc, and focus on core competencies: producing top notch content.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#205

Post by forgottenpass »

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)…

>Those were shocking events. Scientific polls, liquid prediction markets and experts, all predicted different outcomes. It would have been irresponsible to take different positions.

Those were not shocking events. People wanted a prediction with more confidence than those sources of prediction were able to provide. Faced with the hard limitations of existing predictive tools, people that should damn well know better started listening when they found someone to tell them "Nate Silver has Trump at 25%" really meant "Hillary will win."

It would not have been irresponsible to account for the possibility of the less likely but still possible outcome. In fact it would be irresponsible to NOT be prepared for it.

>Either the tools we have to measure these things are inadequate, and must be improved.

We're never going to be able to predict the future with total accuracy. The question is how we want to face them limitations of that accuracy. People who don't take "no" for an answer will read too much into unreliable predictions and attempt to rebuild systems for more predictable results regardless of externalities. The question should be how we adapt to that reality.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#206

Post by Chris2048 »

phaemon wrote: post #196
Chris2048 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One story, all credibility, huh? Yes. The "story" made specific criminal accusations. > You must live in a world where nobody is credible. Publications are held to a different standard. > New York Times... but that doesn't necessarily negate all the work It just means you can no longer trust the publication. > putting it on the same level as Breitbart Here we go. Tell me what's wrong with Breitbart?

> Here we go. Tell me what's wrong with Breitbart? Every story they run on climate change is a pile of innumerate, scientifically illiterate crap? Those are the only stories I see from them as they get quoted for amusement value sometimes on the Sea Ice forums. But maybe their sports coverage is good or something. Who knows.

> Who knows.

You, apparently, since you talked of "the same level as Breitbart", though don't apparently know what that is.

Also, if you have specific knowledge of a subject area, you might be inclined to a kind of reversal of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: judging a publication on you area of expertise alone, when publications may differ in their relative strengths.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#207

Post by brennen »

mundo wrote: post #137
brennen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit seems to be doing fine now Hrm. I resisted this view for quite a while, but as far as I can tell in 2016 reddit is a pathological and destructive ocean of trash fire lunacy which incidentally hosts a few islands of relative sanity. Of course it's hard to generalize about any cultural venue at the scale of reddit. But it really seems to a lot of observers that the pathology has by far outstripped its prosocia…

The problem with generalizing about Reddit is not its size, it's that Reddit is made up of a bunch of separate forums with separate mods and rules and users and so forth. It's just a place where discussion boards live. Reddit : forums :: Blogspot : blogs.

I used to make more or less this same argument, by analogy to Usenet, phpBB forums, etc.

My take now is that this falls apart in that the pathologies of reddit are down to a shared platform (the voting system, moderation tools, etc.), userbase, and site culture. While it's true that userbase and culture are differentiated between subreddits, they aren't really isolated enough, and maybe more importantly, things like GamerGate and /r/The_Donald keep happening.

It doesn't work to assume that every space or interaction on reddit is terrible, but at this point in history it works pretty well for me to treat reddit itself as a terrible meta-space: It routinely and actively produces systems that damage society, out of all proportion to its positive effects.

(Edit: I should add that I was on reddit pretty early in its lifecycle, probably owe my career to proggit in some very important sense, and sincerely feel for the people who have to _run_ the damn thing. It's been a pretty amazing platform in many ways, and it still feels kind of bad to write it off.)

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#208

Post by phaemon »

Chris2048 wrote: post #206
phaemon wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here we go. Tell me what's wrong with Breitbart? Every story they run on climate change is a pile of innumerate, scientifically illiterate crap? Those are the only stories I see from them as they get quoted for amusement value sometimes on the Sea Ice forums. But maybe their sports coverage is good or something. Who knows.

> Who knows. You, apparently, since you talked of "the same level as Breitbart", though don't apparently know what that is. Also, if you have specific knowledge of a subject area, you might be inclined to a kind of reversal of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: judging a publication on you area of expertise alone, when publications may differ in their relative strengths.

No I didn't, that was `astrodust`, not me. I was just providing an example of something that was wrong with them.

Re: Getting Rid of Comments on Vice.com

#209

Post by Chris2048 »

phaemon wrote: post #208
Chris2048 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who knows. You, apparently, since you talked of "the same level as Breitbart", though don't apparently know what that is. Also, if you have specific knowledge of a subject area, you might be inclined to a kind of reversal of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: judging a publication on you area of expertise alone, when publications may differ in their relative strengths.

No I didn't, that was `astrodust`, not me. I was just providing an example of something that was wrong with them.

Sorry, my mistake.

On the other hand.. You answered for them? Only astrodust can know what problem astrodust has with Breitbart...

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