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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

#311

Post by ypeterholmes »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #228
ypeterholmes wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hm. I wanted to edit, turns out I can't. 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 (…

Ok got it. Yeah I'm definitely in favor of folks trying new things like Mozilla and WaPo are. We can only be as intelligent as the conversations we hold with each other.

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

#312

Post by brosirmandude »

bpp wrote: post #212
creaghpatr wrote: post #4

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…

I worked on the blog team for Barack Obama's '08 campaign. The comments section developed a culture of posting a link to their personal fundraising page as the top comment, and other commenters would then donate to it. Someone on the team got annoyed by this so for a while we would post the top comment before publishing such that they couldn't post their personal fundraising link. Then we ran some numbers and realize…

That's really interesting. Did you guys ever test adding a fundraising link in the top comment you post vs a users top comment?

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

#313

Post by jacurtis »

chucksmash wrote: post #139
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.

> This blog post feels like the documentation at MDN, tedious and unclear. This feels like an undeserved swipe to me. How many developers prepend their searches with "mdn" when they need info on browser APIs?

MDN is so confusing when it comes to their documentation. Some pages are better than others, but some are even contradictory in what they say. Then there is the PHP documentation which is both amazing and horrible. Each page starts off with official documentation which is even worse than MDN, but then they created a community documentation on each page (for that method/function/class whatever) below the official ones which are voted up and down by randoms and actually works out to be some of the best documentation on the web. Maybe we should all just jump to community maintained documentation. If i ever am pushed to a PHP doc page, I scroll past the official documentation and read the top rated community post which almost always gives me what I need instantly.

Stackoverflow is my preferred source of course.

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

#314

Post by unescape »

s73ver_ wrote: post #306
unescape wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So they're still associated with the site, but don't actually keep people on the site, site owners have no ability to screen content of these comments which are still associated with the site, and it seeks to deny revenue to the site. I'm sure you'll have hoards of sites signing up for that.

No, the idea is that they don't sign up for it. It's independent of the originating site.

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

#315

Post by jawbone3 »

intended wrote: post #245
alethiophile wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same set of moderation actions will look like a necessary and correct restriction on bad actors to one group, while looking like a choking echo-chamber imposition to another. The reality is that any social space needs to have a set of norms, including ideological norms, that are enforced to a degree to ensure they're followed. The idea of purely "open discussion" is a fantasy; if you ever have something tha…

You dont select the norms You let the people self select themselves.

Do you mean you should select the majority norms or let the first random poster exclude everyone that isn't in their subculture?

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

#316

Post by pbhjpbhj »

blhack wrote: post #308
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still really like Slashdot's comment moderation, with multiple characteristics, and the ability to quickly collapse all ajudged low-value comments with a slider. The ability to promote certain users comments (and vice versa) is good too; but you have to use that carefully. Would love to have that with the content and users here.

Maybe /. is better now? That used to be my main tech news website, but Reddit replaced it because of the comment structure. (And then HN replaced that because of the quality of comments here)

Reddit replaced /. and Digg to my recollection primarily because of political issues and user resistance to site updates.

I came to HN well before I found Reddit (I think it being mentioned here was the stimulus). [this is my 2nd username here]

HN thrives IMO because it got a high value kernel of contributors early on, through synergy with Ycombinators business, and because of strong moderation heavily focused against new users.

Up until the last year or so most comment threads haven't needed to be filtered, due to the relatively small population, but popular stories now attract a mass of comments such that one can't easily scan through to precis the range of reactions.

HN maybe wants to stay "small" though. A lot of users in any case want to keep a tight focus on start-ups/computer tech/programming; keeping a "clunky" comment system probably provides useful friction to that end.

The main frustration in consuming comments here for me is the lack of differentiation between valuable and disagreeable comments. Though this appears to reflect pg's personal philosophy (he stated that down-voting for disagreement was proper, or words to that effect).

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

#317

Post by s73ver_ »

unescape wrote: post #314
s73ver_ wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they're still associated with the site, but don't actually keep people on the site, site owners have no ability to screen content of these comments which are still associated with the site, and it seeks to deny revenue to the site. I'm sure you'll have hoards of sites signing up for that.

No, the idea is that they don't sign up for it. It's independent of the originating site.

Except it's not, because you still want it to be associated with the site. If you just want to comment on something, you already have Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, your own blog, and probably a dozen other outlets. What you're asking for is the added legitimacy of the site itself, without their consent.

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

#318

Post by unescape »

s73ver_ wrote: post #317
unescape wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the idea is that they don't sign up for it. It's independent of the originating site.

Except it's not, because you still want it to be associated with the site. If you just want to comment on something, you already have Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, your own blog, and probably a dozen other outlets. What you're asking for is the added legitimacy of the site itself, without their consent.

Read the top-level comment from hello_there:

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.

What he is asking for is the exact opposite of "the added legitimacy of the site itself". He's asking for a user interface to integrate content that does not come from the site itself.

That would be a lot cooler than another comment moderation system, of which there are already multiple open-source implementations. Could someone at least provide an argument of why Mozilla Talk is better than the existing solutions?

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

#319

Post by kyle-rb »

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…

>I still find Reddit comments the easiest to read and follow (HN is a pretty close second, especially after they added comment collapsing)

Really? I hate the tree style of comments. It's all well and good when you're reading a chain of replies, but then you run into a comment that's halfway back up the tree and have to make several attempts at collapsing comments to figure out which one is the sibling.

I much prefer a comment system like 4chan, where the post you're replying to is linked and previewable, as are posts replying to yours.

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

#320

Post by 52-6F-62 »

ypeterholmes wrote: post #311
52-6F-62 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. I wanted to edit, turns out I can't. 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 (…

Ok got it. Yeah I'm definitely in favor of folks trying new things like Mozilla and WaPo are. We can only be as intelligent as the conversations we hold with each other.

Yeah pretty much. My personal take is there probably needs to be a larger paradigm shift in society and most people's general outlook, ultimately. I'm not quite sure proper moderation or emojis or comment filtering will help all that much. Let's face it, while on some sides optimism abounds, there has been pervading (and maybe growing with the access to information) a jadedness that is pervasive in how people conduct themselves.
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