
Comment sections are poison: handle with care or remove them (2014) - luu
http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/sep/12/comment-sections-toxic-moderation
======
shortoncash
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
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
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.

~~~
krapp
I suspect comment sections outside of forums (or sites which are designed
around discussion like HN or Reddit) are mostly attempts to make a site more
"viral" and "social", in the belief that doing so will somehow drive people to
your site and keep them engaged and maybe clicking on the ads or whatever.

While this could be true, with certain sites (like news sites) comments are
bound to be politically charged and tend towards the negative. Doubly so if
comments allow threading or reflinks, making tangential discussions (and
arguments) between posters easy. I think many sites assume comments would
somehow lead to a revenue stream because something something facebook.

Also, it's probably likely that any site built on Wordpress is going to keep
comments by default in their templates.

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sfeng
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.

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

~~~
tim333
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.

~~~
krapp
From what I've observed on HN at least, people seem to invariably spot
propaganda in comments which contradict their politics or biases, but somehow
the comments they agree with are always authentic and valid.

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jmspring
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.

~~~
jsprogrammer
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?

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brownbat
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.

~~~
dang
> There are great places for civil discussion online.

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

~~~
vonklaus
well, HN is a pretty good example.

~~~
dang
Maybe if you grade on a curve. But HN can and should be better.

We're working on a set of moderation tools for the community that we hope will
help with this.

------
scoofy
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).

~~~
jsprogrammer
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.

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

------
colinbartlett
I really highly recommend the Shut Up Chrome Extension:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shut-
up/oklfoejikk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shut-
up/oklfoejikkmejobodofaimigojomlfim?hl=en)

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

------
unknownian
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.

------
cft
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...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/21/tech/web/online-comment-sections/)

I wonder what Disqus YC 07 thinks of that?

------
michaelpinto
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.

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Aloisius
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
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.

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

------
Alex3917
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.

~~~
tim333
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.

------
bobcostas55
Coming from The Guardian that's rich. Youtube comments feature a far higher
level of discourse than their "Comment is Free" section.

------
Snesker
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.

~~~
karmacondon
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.

~~~
krapp
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.

------
dyscrete
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
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.

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

~~~
rtpg
My gut feeling is that community voting is more than enough to make HN an echo
chamber.

Think about it, if you see a slightly greyed-out comment, that becomes a data-
point in interpreting the comment.

Though compared to other places with such strong voting mechanisms, the echo
chamber seems to be less in effect. Only topic I can think about where it
really comes out is articles on Uber, bizarrely.

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
I'm not sure if that's true. While voting does definitely encourage an echo
chamber, it requires moderation so that the true majority doesn't gain a
foothold. If it weren't for the moderation on this site, it would be much like
reddit.

~~~
SquareWheel
Which means nothing, because nearly every reddit community is different.

Moderation plays a small role in the HN community. Any "community bubble" is
due to shared interests and a core set of guidelines. This seems like an
excuse for making a libertarian rant and nothing more.

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
I'm far from a libertarian. I think moderation is a good thing, I just think
we need to recognize that it creates bubbles in and of itself. If you want a
more concrete reddit example, /r/lgbt and /r/ainbow would provide a concrete
example. Moderation provides the tone for a community unless it remains
totally unmoderated.

~~~
SquareWheel
I don't disagree that moderation can set the tone for a community. I'm just
arguing that's not the case on Hacker News. This site has a very strong focus
on technology and startups. Any specific niche will create a bubble.

It's also worth keeping in mind that /r/ainbow was created as an alternative
after the mess that /r/lgbt became. /r/games from /r/gaming is a similar
example. As much as a change in moderation was a focus, it was also a
different audience that moved over to the new subs.

~~~
AnkhMorporkian
I think HN is less bubbly than most enclosed communities, but it's definitely
a bubble whenever it comes to feminism or social justice issues. Check out any
post on those issues, check the comments, and refresh. It's intense how many
comments are removed.

~~~
maxerickson
Turn on "showdead" in your profile. Those comments are removed by user actions
(and there is a small difference from removed, they are still available to
logged in users that know about that setting).

------
Jimmy
>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.

~~~
pimlottc
> 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.

~~~
Jimmy
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.

