Comment sections are poison: handle with care or remove them (2014)

http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/sep/12/comment-sections-toxic-moderation

by luu • 11 years ago

38 59 11 years ago

dyscrete• 11 years ago

Of course take everything with a grain of salt.

The Hacker News community's comments are actually more intellectual than the writer's click-bait propaganda, and leaves room for debate on the author's one-sided views.

Edit: grammar

rodgerd• 11 years ago

HN is as much an echo chamber as any other moderated community; the fact you find it a more agreeable echo chamber doesn't mean much.

AnkhMorporkian4• 11 years ago

Absolutely. Hell, it's much more of an echo chamber than most communities as it's so tightly moderated. Moderation begets echoes.

ZanyProgrammer• 11 years ago

The Guardian is Fox News for Anglo-American progressives (or at least a certain set of them).

parfe• 11 years ago

Users are not permitted to comment freely on HN. Step too far out of line and your comment becomes invisible and you risk a shadow ban. This site offers the most vanilla, white bread, predictable discussion of any forum I frequent. No real surprise about what this user base wants.

defineclean2• 11 years ago

Your spot-on comment is already getting grayed out. Oh the irony.

If the truth hurts... downvote it so it can be hidden! Yeah, that'll show you!

jerf• 11 years ago

I would submit there's a significant difference between comment sites on the original site, and secondary comment sites like Slashdot, Reddit, and HN. The article is clearly about the former. I am not personally aware of a site that at scale (i.e., not a blog with a couple hundred commenters, tops) is worth reading the comments.

Sure, you can write complaints about Slashdot, Reddit, and HN (see siblings of this post competing to see who can slag on them the hardest), but at least there's a chance of some semblance of discussion. That is not a chance that big sites have.

Jimmy2• 11 years ago

In the absence of strict moderation, we’d be much better off without them.

I have little doubt as to the particular types of views that the author would want moderators to enforce.

voltagex_• 11 years ago

What, why, and why is that a bad thing?

pimlottc• 11 years ago

I have little doubt as to the particular types of views that the author would want moderators to enforce.

This is another argument for removing comments: implementing any form of moderation opens you to criticism that you're not doing it fairly, favoring certain viewpoints or users over others.

Jimmy2• 11 years ago

Anything you do is always open to any sort of criticism. I happen to believe that there are reasonable forms of moderation, as well as forms that are less reasonable.

NeutronBoy• 11 years ago

More and more of the people I subscribe to on Youtube are disabling comments, purely because the amount of time and effort required to moderate them to stop personal attacks, spam, and those stupid chain comments is simply not worth it.

noir_lord• 11 years ago

I used uBlock to hide comments on pretty much every site I visit, they are incredibly seldom worth the time reading.

jmspring• 11 years ago

I think the comment sections of local news sources are amongst the most toxic, especially in smaller communities. Locally, Topix, Disqus, Patch comments, and a couple of others have been taken over by a vocal minority of paranoid individuals. While it is amusing to watch now and then, it basically makes the comment mediums useless. There is no granular oversight, just a blanket remove and lock comments at a macro (article) scale.

jsprogrammer2• 11 years ago

I think it is important and useful to expose those views to the outside world. How can those views be addressed, and progress made, if they remain largely invisible?

cft• 11 years ago

CNN and many other major American news outlets got rid or significantly downscaled comments in the fall of 2014: http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/21/tech/web/online-comment-sectio...

I wonder what Disqus YC 07 thinks of that?

unknownian• 11 years ago

I used to be someone who defended comments in general. I think they are only good for a certain subset of usecases, such as college campus blogs, where different voices can and should be heard. But other sites often do comments rather poorly, and only on the occasional tech blog will one find useful information in a comment, but not usually.

Aloisius• 11 years ago

You'd think we'd have the technology where we could dramatically reduce this problem without having every single community moderate its own comments - especially given so many of the comment systems are run by centralized third-parties like Disqus, but sadly, that has not happened.

I think we should treat the comment cesspools of the Internet like say, Youtube or Politico like a honeypot. If you comment there, frankly I never want to see anything you ever write on the Internet ever again.

saganus• 11 years ago

I believe this is one of those cases where the problem can't be solved by technology because it's more of a social issue.

I mean sure, you can implement more clever ways for comment moderation, like HN, but there's always going to be the issue where some parts of the community complain about how things are going for the worse.

This will always happen I believe, regardless of the community or the tech used to moderate its comments. And so at some point someone will inevitably consider community X's comments to be poison.

I can almost bet that there are people out there that believe HN comments are poison because the comments all show groupthink or whatever (not saying I believe this is the case, but that there's probably someone who thinks this way). And technology won't ever solve this.

bobcostas55• 11 years ago

Coming from The Guardian that's rich. Youtube comments feature a far higher level of discourse than their "Comment is Free" section.

scoofy• 11 years ago

So, i've been obsessed with the concept that uber and lyft rates both the operator and rider. Now, it may already exist, but i've never understood the idea of new commenters being allowed equal weight with those of established reputation. Reddit may do well shadow-banning, but the effect that known trolls continuously show up at all seems a problem.

I've always thought we out to be putting people with reputations' comments by people with similar reputations' eyes, and noobs' comments to noobs' eyes. Once the new people have established them as reasonable people, they start showing up more to people who have built a reputation.

Not just gross, net, or average karma, but i think to do it right, you'd need some sort of handicapping system like golf. On a good day, to you provide good content, great. If so, we'll rank you higher in the feeds of others with good handicap. Not every comment will hurt you if it's not helpful (we all have bad days, and everyone is occasionally grumpy), but if more often than not, your comments are terrible you're aren't going to be placed high in the feeds of those who are more socially adjusted.

One downside is that if some lurker who is an expert in the subject comes alone, he or she may no be able to participate in with all, but in communities like reddit or these, if you cannot pass some threshold, then you're not really a part of the community anyhow.

Another downside i see is that lurkers are a major portion of theses websites revenues, and the sites don't really want to remove content from their eyes. I'm not sure how to fix that issue, but for well establish sites, i think filtering via similar karma-type levels would surely bring up the discourse for those who want to have it, while keeping the trolls trolling other trolls (which is rather interesting to watch anyway).

EGreg• 11 years ago

What about the Randall Munroe scheme that Reddit actually uses?

http://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/2ff814/reminder_randal...

jsprogrammer2• 11 years ago

It's kind of like skill-matching in games...however, I think that all of the comments need to be made available to everyone, although the order of presentation my be altered by the skill-matching algorithm.

The idea that content should willfully, and secretly, be withheld from users is a bit frightening and I reject it.

colinbartlett• 11 years ago

I really highly recommend the Shut Up Chrome Extension:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shut-up/oklfoejikk...

It drastically improves the entire internet just by blocking every comment section everywhere on every website, except those you explicitly whitelist.

sfeng• 11 years ago

Just to provide a counter point, I really love comment sections. It's a way of seeing how other people are reacting to what I just read. When a news site doesn't support comments I find myself searching for them.

zf00002• 11 years ago

I find old comments on old news stories interesting. They provide kind of a snapshot of what people were thinking/feeling at a given time.

The day Obama released his birth certificate for instance. If you go back and look at some of the more fringy sites, the comments on that day are pretty amusing. A lot of people mystified by pdf layers.

fluidcruft• 11 years ago

I don't know why anyone should believe comment sections are authentic. In my mind they are propaganda ground zero.

smtddr• 11 years ago

The fact that I can count on opinions like this countering propaganda is exactly what makes comment sections valuable.

tim3333• 11 years ago

Well there are usually some authentic comments mixed in. Admittedly some dictatorial regimes appear to employ people to comment in their favour. Iran, N Korea and Russia seem to do that but you can mentally filter them.

michaelpinto• 11 years ago

I get the "broken windows" approach, but moderation after the fact is the worst way to run a virtual community. For starters you have to embrace the notion that by having an open forum that you have a community, and you need to lead by example and nurture and give positive feedback to those who add something.

Alex39172• 11 years ago

So basically the people who advocated for the Iraq war are the good guys, whereas the people complaining about it in the comments are the bad ones because they aren't nice. Even the darkest corners of 4chan have nothing on the atrocities the mainstream media has advocated for over the years.

tim3333• 11 years ago

Yeah, you may have a point there. With wars in general the elites benefit - defence contracts, interesting news, the chance to play the big leader - while the general population suffer the downsides - higher taxes, being held vaguely responsible for killings done by your country that you never asked for and so on. It's good to have some counter to all that.

brownbat• 11 years ago

All these articles are starting to look the same: 1. commenters are all awful, therefore, 2. content sites should cut off comments

It's one of those awkward arguments where I want to vigorously deny the premiss but affirm the conclusion.

There are great places for civil discussion online. If people who make content can't figure out how to build one, they should stop trying and just stick to what they know.

dang2• 11 years ago

There are great places for civil discussion online.

Where? I'd like to see examples, especially any that are new to me.

vonklaus• 11 years ago

well, HN is a pretty good example.

tertius• 11 years ago

What are some of the "old to you" examples?

mattmaroon• 11 years ago

Everyone who thinks making places for civil discussion is doable has never tried to do it. It's an amount of effort that is usually uneconomical.

Alex39172• 11 years ago

The problem with Internet comments isn't really incivility per se, but rather a free ridership problem. That is, people are getting to use a platform created by others without incurring any costs if they cause damage to that platform.

I'd argue that incivility itself isn't even necessarily a bad thing, and that the real goal shouldn't be eliminating incivility, but rather making people put their money where their mouths are. (So to speak.)

shortoncash2• 11 years ago

The comments are usually better than the article. It feels like the same article gets pushed across the web over and over and all the news comes from the same few sources on a few channels. The comments give variety and call out the BS.

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

Maybe on a dedicated discussion platform like HN, but so many times the comments section of a major news outfit read like a YouTube commentator's stupider, meaner little brother.

a3n• 11 years ago

Yeah, I don't know why general news outlets have comment sections, they're universally awful. They should go back to Letters (Emails) to the Editor, but that would mean they'd have to pay someone to field the emails.

shortoncash2• 11 years ago

There's always gems among the dumb and/or mean comments.

I don't comment too much[1] because I've found that, in general, there's always someone smarter than me who has said what I want to say already. The fact that I always seem to find that smarter person in the comments is why I'd prefer comments sections not to go, even if they are loaded with trolls.

[1] This thread's an exception, I suppose. I don't want to see comment sections go, though!

defineclean2• 11 years ago

Comment sections are poison because they undermine the ability to control the narrative.

Snesker• 11 years ago

The most important function comments serve is to allow readers to view dissenting opinions and remarks conveniently. Something they would otherwise have to search out.

To date I have not seen a method of comment moderation on any site that hasn't been used to stifle dissent or unpopular opinions. It's unacceptable to give the illusion of open, free discussion when you have the ability to downvote or delete a post.

This is, plain and simple, an article espousing censorship. I'm not qualified intellectually to argue with censorship proponents, especially here.

xexers• 11 years ago

To date I have not seen a method of comment moderation on any site that hasn't been used to stifle dissent or unpopular opinions. It's unacceptable to give the illusion of open, free discussion when you have the ability to downvote or delete a post.

What are your thoughts on the downvote system? on Reddit, a comment that is badly downvoted sinks to the bottom and becomes collapsed... but if you want, you can still choose to read it.

karmacondon• 11 years ago

There's a difference between censorship and moderation. If I replied to your comment with vitriolic hate speech that was clearly against the community rules and the mods removed it, that would be moderation. If I merely disagreed with your ideas or expressed an unpopular opinion while staying within the rules and the mods removed it, that would be censorship. The line is admittedly fuzzy, but it's usually an issue of intent and perceived contribution to meaningful discussion.

People consciously or unconsciously associate comments with the site where they read them. This can hurt the brand of the site and be a distraction from the useful conversations that its trying to foster. Turning comments off isn't censorship, it's a matter of self-defense. It also isn't censorship by definition, as you can't censor someone without knowing what they are going to say or whether or not they are going to agree with you.

It would be nice if there was a technical solution that could separate politically divisive trolling from the informative presentation of opposing views, but that doesn't exist yet. We're left with expensive human moderation that doesn't scale well. So, for now, turning off comments is the best solution for some. Hopefully we can solve the problem by raising the overall level of public discourse, but I'd bet on a getting a technical solution to work long before that happens.

krapp3• 11 years ago

I prefer solutions that are local rather than global. For instance - a killfile to let users ignore other users or a keyword filter to block comments they might not want to see, rather than global bans or the fade effect HN has for downvoting.

Unfortunately, some people want open discussion, while other people want bubbles. I would rather people censor themselves than censor other people, and create their own bubbles.

Comment sections are poison: handle with care or remove them (2014)

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