Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were-shutting-our-comments

by martinml • 13 years ago

57 10 13 years ago

astrodust• 13 years ago

Interesting that it's a sort of scientific decision based on testing.

Good. Whenever I visit PopSci I'm amazed at how low quality the comments are. They felt like they belonged more on Fox News than a science site.

mixmastamyk• 13 years ago

Good comments are useful. Perhaps they don't have the resources, but comment moderation could solve the problem.

kineticfocus• 13 years ago

Somehow this feels like going backwards and just ignoring ignorance. Fire-with-fire I suppose.

B-Con• 13 years ago

I have similar feelings about article comments in general. Most of it is noise not worth reading. Exceptions are communities with a specific focus, or communities where the comments are at least mostly segregated from the content and easily blockable.

Here's a small plug for my AdBlock browser add-on that blocks most user comments on the Internet: http://mute.bradconte.com.

cryptolect• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, it's way to easy for a select group to ruin an article with their negative and factually incorrect comments. In particular for a science site, I think comments should be restricted, at least from anonymous drivers-by.

guscost• 13 years ago

They actually wrote the phrase "scientific doctrine" without irony. Unbelievable.

jacobquick• 13 years ago

Unmoderated comments are inevitably a disaster. Shame they didn't look at previous evidence before deciding to repeat other people's failed experiments.

captainmuon• 13 years ago

This seems so wrong. By giving up, they're just letting the trolls win. I'd rather keep the option to read and post comments, even if that means that there is the occasional uncivil one. Heck, I'd even keep the anonymous comments on Youtube, although they are 90% crap.

There is no need to hide the comments, make them more civilized, unanonymized or something like that. Rather, what we need is media literacy - the learned ability to weigh the importance of comments correctly.

There is this thing that they call "shitstorm" over here in Germany (I'm sure it doesn't mean in English what they think it means). Basically there's some minor event, and a very vocal minority complains about it on the internet (esp. on twitter). The media jumps onto the bandwagon, it gets completely blown out of proportion, and suddenly there's an artificial public outrage. This is the exact same thing. We have to learn to ignore the vocal idiots, and filter the important from the unimportant information. This is a social skill we have to develop. The social development hasn't kept pace with the technological development.

MaulingMonkey• 13 years ago

We have "shitstorms" here in the USA as well, for what it's worth.

Popsci doesn't have control over whether their readership can filter through the comments well. As for doing the filtering on the behalf of said readership... it appears they've decided they either don't have the ability, don't have the time, or simply don't see enough value in putting up with wading through shitstorms for every single article. Even if you have enough self mastery to avoid letting it influence you in the slightest, that's not a free effort. And for every person who learns the skill, another is born who has not yet learned it, and may never master it: I wouldn't cast it as a "solvable problem" at a public-at-large scale.

The goal of trolls is to rile you up, not to get you to close your comments section. Stopping unmoderated comments is less "letting them win" and more "not playing their game on their terms". It is less "giving up" and more "picking their battles". They're still planning to engage with their community through occasional comments sections, and through other forms of social media. They'll still have to deal with trolls there. Just, hopefully, less frequently, in venues where they're more easily comabtable or less toxic.

Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments

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