221–230 of 347 posts
I started by reading the comments section here on HN. Couldn't find any solid information about what this Mozilla thing actually is. So I broke down, and clicked the link to actually read the source article. Still couldn't find any meaningful information about the thing. At this point I considered this a personal challenge. So I clicked the link at the bottom of the article, to ITS original source ( http://coralproje…
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That's funny. I tend to skip the article and go into the comments. Comments tell me "what's wrong with the article", and in doing so, give you a good picture of what the article is about. As for the "what's wrong" part itself: generally speaking, you can really tell by how the comment is written whether it's legit or not. That way, you kinda get two sides of the coin, and you can decide for yourself what's going on.
I think you two are thinking of different things, and missing an important point: Comments are only as good as the community that's writing them. YouTube comments are the kind of comments you don't want to read, HN comments are the kind you skip the article for. Whether comments are valuable very much depends on the kind of people you have writing them, and I believe it's worth trying to maintain a good commenting co…
But that was kind of my point; by looking at the way a response to a piece of content is written, you can judge its merit somewhat accurately.
For example, on a video about the way the Suicide Squad movie was edited, you might see:
- "BRILLIANT 100% agree!"
- "While I think you're right, there might be a couple of things you missed out on [...]"
- "FU M8 DA MOVIE WAS AWESUM!!!1@2"
Each of these comments tells you something different. And yes, some say more about the audience than the content ;)
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The best comment threads are on Slashdot, the ability to filter comments less than +2 makes it much easier to skim read all the good comments. On Reddit, if the top comment is a joke, you need to wade through a million other jokes before you get to the next top level comment (which may be interesting) Categorising (a la slashdot) comments is interesting, you can filter out 'funny' and keep 'informative' etc. But I gu…
>>> Facebook has solved this with their 'reaction' icons The Globe and Mail (Canadian national newspaper and growing media company) has executed something similar. They actually have some pretty innovative work going on (at least with respect to the rest of Canadian media), and maintain a lab for this express purpose. example (scroll to the end of the article, comments are expandable): https://beta.theglobeandmail.co…
Can't speak for WaPo but the New York Times comments sections are absolutely dominated by a handful of designated 'top commenters' who rush to post on any major story. Sometimes their comments are good, but then there's the guy who writes a poem every single time, or 'Socrates' who posts the same cookie-cutter 'blame-the-GOP-all-the-way-back-to-bush' comment with the most dramatic rhetoric possible, trolling for like…
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…
What I'd love is to see a tool that allows you to see fact from opinion and the ability to see multiple perspectives.
In Australia there's a government run TV channel that have programs that attempt this. Good journalism is hard to find though.
As technologists we've built this system that optimises for page views. Surely we're capable of building a system that optimises for the truth instead.
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Needs aren't as profitable.
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."; whether Henry Ford truly said that or not is immaterial as the quote itself is the point I was trying to make. And your comment really rather touches on it. Peoples' needs aren't as profitable -- not until what they need also becomes what they want.
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Just devils advocate here, but could it be you're the minority of that demographic? I'm libertarian, and vote all over the map, but likely lean more liberal. I know plenty of well educated, employed conservatives. But, a bulk of voters in Trump's corner are not you. It's like going to a Free Speech rally. Some people are likely there just for speech, but if Neo-Nazis show up, and cause a ruckus, they're the face of t…
Maybe the phenomenon you describe would be weaker in U.S. politics if there were more political parties and less incentive for people to vote major-party. As it is, it seems like a lot of political journalism consists of different attempts at tea-leaf reading about which demographics were motivated to join which coalitions how, and whether the coalitions will shift, and how we would even know. I'm sure those phenomen…
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Maybe the phenomenon you describe would be weaker in U.S. politics if there were more political parties and less incentive for people to vote major-party. As it is, it seems like a lot of political journalism consists of different attempts at tea-leaf reading about which demographics were motivated to join which coalitions how, and whether the coalitions will shift, and how we would even know. I'm sure those phenomen…
This unfortunately doesn't work well in a "first past the post" voting system, as a more general party will typically overpower a split opposition.
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>>> Facebook has solved this with their 'reaction' icons The Globe and Mail (Canadian national newspaper and growing media company) has executed something similar. They actually have some pretty innovative work going on (at least with respect to the rest of Canadian media), and maintain a lab for this express purpose. example (scroll to the end of the article, comments are expandable): https://beta.theglobeandmail.co…
That comment section looks terrible. For one thing- the fact you even needed to tell us how to find them? Second, what's innovative there? I can't even collapse threads.
I was mistaken, the comment section is provided by: https://www.getcivil.com/
Their innovation labs have more to do with redesigning their end-user services and making them accessible. Anyway I'm not their salesman, I work for a competitor. I just have heard a talk from the head of their lab in the springtime and it was great. They're at least trying things on, whereas media (at least in my experience so far) has been largely resistant.
Trust me, try pitching, or carrying out at a manager's request, a project that changes the working, production, and content delivery paradigms of media and media-design veterans at the pinnacle of their careers; they do not like it.
The fact that the Globe, NYT, and WaPo are active in trying new things is great.
Again if you doubt me, try managing 20+ WordPress multi-sites, each with differing and undocumented theme build processes, and every little component another undocumented patchworked plugin -- all because most of the group doesn't want to have to relearn something they figured was solved enough in 2005.
Innovation like these things in media is well overdue in so many of the processes up to the front end.
Further, the link above is a beta. At least they are trying on different comment systems that aren't Disqus or the 'same old thing'.
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Isn't that what Facebook does with their curated newsfeed? Doesn't that just make echo chambers?
I'm not on Facebook so I don't know much about the newsfeed, but the goal is to eliminate trolling and toxicity, not debates.
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Do internet comment sections satisfy any need?
If they provide an avenue for topical and reasonable discourse, then yes. People (at least some people) tend toward the need for discourse to temper and test their ideas. I mean, you're commenting on HN.
It's the guidelines. By writing guidelines that promote useful discourse you allow everyone involved to learn more about their own biases and shortcomings.
Every person that writes their opinion grows when reading the varied responses (as long as they're open to other people's perspectives).