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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

#61

Post by ZenoArrow »

hello_there wrote: post #40

Here's a slightly off-topic dream about online comments: 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. That would would provide transparency to the moderation process, ability to comment anywhere, and it would allow modera…

I like where you're going with this, but here's a question for you... Who controls the streams that are available on a website? Is it the end user or the website owner?

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

#62

Post by forapurpose »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #3

As a DC-area resident and frequent reader of the Washington Post, the biggest problem with their comments section is the commenters. I'm not sure how this helps.

> the biggest problem with their comments section is the commenters

I think that's the problem with comments on any website. The questions are 1) how to bring out the best from people, and 2) whether that is sufficient.

The same person will behave very differently in different contexts. They may be professional but constrained in a business meeting or around superiors; intellectual, curious, and challenging in a classroom; and obnoxious and loud in a bar. How do you make your comment section, and website in general, bring out the qualities you want in your comments? I'd guess that many websites are not so altruistic as to want intelligent comments more than provocative ones, to generate traffic. I recently read an interesting history of the NY Times Op-Ed section, which said that provocation, rather than wisdom, was the intent.

And even if you bring out the best in people, is that sufficient? I find almost all columnists and op-ed writers to be a waste of time; how much time do I have for uninformed, random people? (And I appreciate the irony of saying that in my comment!)

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

#63

Post by alloyed »

rusk wrote: post #34
Twirrim wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better tools to filter out trolls leaves more space for healthy debate. The very nature of US political discourse itself leaves no space for healthy debate. I'm sceptical that removing the trolls is going to be sufficient to fix that.

I wonder is this a line of thinking borne of weariness? The dreadful nature of political discourse everywhere is surely something that should be up for improvement. I'd like to think technology could be used to improve this, even though lately it seems to have been confusing things. I'd be given to thinking that once the public at large become more familiar with, and respectful of the power of social media, it will b…

I absolutely agree that our current situation needs to be improved, but looking at the history of media leads me to believe that by progressing past the centralized and regulated system of TV and radio we've left a local maximum when it comes to "civility". Older forms of "ugly" news, like the press of the french revolution or turn-of-the-century america, didn't get fixed over time, but by the law "catching up", either through oppression or the increase of regulation causing regulatory capture. Of course, the idea of recentralizing speech is more or less unacceptable: what would that even mean when the problem is not a small group of newsmakers, but literally everybody? I don't see any other solutions in our long past, though.

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

#65

Post by intopieces »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #57

Mozilla -- the organization that fired its CEO because it disagreed with a political donation he made in California -- lacks credibility when it talks about building an "open society".

"Brendan Eich was not fired. After his appointment, there was backlash from the Mozilla Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did. The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation; they did not "remove him because of his views." If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place. Resignation (after only 11 days in the CEO role) became the only viable path forward when a sizable portion of the Mozilla Community refused to follow the person that the Board designated to lead the organization. That wide refusal and rejection fomented the issue, and Eich's decision to maintain his public stance on gay marriage -- as is his right -- created an impasse. It is incorrect to say that he was fired or removed; it is fair, though, to say that he was forced out."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ce...

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

#66

Post by KGIII »

CodeCube wrote: post #13
Yhippa wrote: post #11

I would love to see a big site try to use Slashdot's old commenting system. Commenting felt like a privilege and so did moderation.

Slashdot's commenting system was 100% an echo chamber ;)

Observationally, that is untrue. There is a wide display of varied opinions that are given positive moderation.

Of course, it takes some work to read through the trolls, but their moderation system is cushioned by the meta moderation impacting who gets mod points and who does not.

I have, for example, been given great scores for comments defending Microsoft and even systemd. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it.

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

#67

Post by unescape »

wyattjoh wrote: post #49
unescape wrote: post #48

Mozilla Talk could be useful if it let me apply my own moderation schema (filters, blocklists, etc). It looks like another totally centralized moderation tool: https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html The only explanation of their approach is that they did "an enormous amount of research". This sounds about as convincing as someone claiming "Oh, I took a class in that."

Believe it or not, you can! Check our the documentation https://coralproject.github.io/talk/ where you can use plugins to hook any any part of the commenting process.

Are you saying I can run plugins as a site user (not administrator)? That doesn't seem to be the case.

https://coralproject.github.io/talk/docs/running/plugins/

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

#68

Post by badsectoracula »

Yhippa wrote: post #11

I would love to see a big site try to use Slashdot's old commenting system. Commenting felt like a privilege and so did moderation.

I don't know about commenting, but reading the comments felt like a chore with all the sliders, buttons to load more comments that went to another page where you couldn't follow the discussion, some comments being partially loaded or whatever.

By far the worst UI in a comment system. And they still do the slider and "load all comments" bit, but at least the UI feels a bit better than some years ago.

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

#69

Post by jonathankoren »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #50
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.

I'd suggest that the article gives enough clues about why this Mozilla Talk solution is as beneficial to news sites as it is for their readers, but you have to consider who they're competing against. Do you think this has benefits for news sites over the solutions that players like Disqus and Facebook put out?

Yell Mozilla certainly thinks it's moderating tools are better.

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

#70

Post by KGIII »

narrator wrote: post #14
Yhippa wrote: post #11

I would love to see a big site try to use Slashdot's old commenting system. Commenting felt like a privilege and so did moderation.

Because it has been attacked and gamed by various troll armies over the years, the Slashdot comment system works about as well as any comment system out there. What's interesting about it is, if you really want to, you can see all the troll comments, but you have to specifically tweak all the comment knobs to unhide them.

The moderation at Soylent News (uses a forked version of Slashcode) is pretty good, for such a small community.
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