[LINK] The Internet's problem with comments

Frank O'Connor francisoconnor3 at bigpond.com
Thu Sep 26 14:35:22 AEST 2013


I can't understand why this is an issue for Ars.

I mean, the grand daddy of blogs and other commentary systems ... USENET ... had serious noise problems from Day 1. So there was no reason to suspect that its various descendants would be any different.

Trash talk, trolling, abuse, and the like abound in all manner of Internet forums. People the world over have no problems providing evidence of their bigotry, stupidity, biases and outright bastardry to the world at large ... possibly because of the pseudo anonymity of the Internet. Not realising that such commentary can be traced back to them, they tend to be a lot freer with their various opinions and prejudices than they would be in polite society (where people tend to compromise in the interests of getting along ... or not getting thumped by the victim of their derogatory comments).

For me, and given that this state of affairs has existed for 25 years or more in whatever manner of public forums have succeeded USENET ... I just accept it as a given.

80-90% of Internet content is effectively noise.

But in many ways ... that's what makes it so appealing. It's raw, it's unvarnished, in many ways it represents people's true opinions and prejudices. It reveals us as the unattractive, bigoted, egotistical, selfish, dirty and disreputable animals that we basically are. It strips away 'socially acceptable' and 'nice' and reinforces my opinion that it is hard to make a case that we deserve to survive. (Hence I can sleep nights with no problems when short-sighted profit seeking pricks take over the world, and carefully steer us towards the various cliffs that we could/may drop off over the next 50 off years or so as the Four Horsemen stalk the Earth. I simply don't care any more.)

For a cynic like myself ... the often raw cruelty and inhumanity just reinforces everything I believe about our species, and there's no way any of it is surprising or shocking.

Just my 2 cents worth ...
---
On 26/09/2013, at 12:39 PM, Kim Holburn <kim at holburn.net> wrote:

> http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/09/youtube-tries-to-rescue-its-terrible-commenters-from-themselves/
> 
>> YouTube tries to rescue its terrible commenters from themselves
>> 
>> YouTube comments are awful, but still not bad enough for Google to go nuclear.
> 
> 
>> YouTube has announced plans to reformat its presentation of comments below its videos to turn them from some of the Internet’s worst dreck to relevant and—even more daringly—useful content. Rather than the chronological organization that the site has always used, comments will now consist of a mix of comments from YouTube personalities, “engaged conversations,” and friends on Google+.
> 
> ....
> 
>> The Internet’s comment problem is not a secret; most large online publications are dealing with it daily one way or another. Where some see a system for encouraging discussion and surfacing new perspectives and information, others see an echo chamber of bad grammar, unchecked stupidity, and the constructive interference of emotions that blow up “problems” like whether a camel is funnier than the E-Trade baby or whether a commenter is a lesbian.
>> 
>> Gawker developed its own system, Kinja, that recasts each commenter’s contributions in the form of a blog. Its comments are also integrated with a voting system. Popular Science recently announced that it was doing away with comments altogether, arguing that comments are “undermining bedrock scientific doctrine." Comments that may advance the discussion aren't worth the ones that derail it, PopSci says.
> 
> ...
> 
>> (Comments) were born into a world of small online communities that didn’t cross paths with each other for the most part.
> 
> 
> ...
> 
>> The study that Popular Science uses to justify doing away with comments proves that hostile and polemic comments negatively affect the reader’s perception of the article they appear under. But the study doesn’t address how civil or informed comments might improve a reader’s perception of an article.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Kim Holburn
> IT Network & Security Consultant
> T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
> mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
> skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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