

This Story Stinks - mxfh
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/this-story-stinks.html

======
friendly_chap
"Then someone invented “reader comments” and paradise was lost".

Of course the paradise was lost for the oppressing media. Long live the
internet.

"Comments from some readers, our research shows, can significantly distort
what other readers think was reported in the first place"

Research would show that your lies significantly distort what readers think in
the first place.

"But as they say, the genie is out of the bottle."

You would happily undo this whole internet thingie, wouldn't you?

~~~
lutze
Yeah seriously.

This guy just lauded the internet as a bastion of debate, and then in the same
breath bemoaned the fact that the dirty proles get to talk back.

It's not a "debate" if other people don't get a say, it's propaganda...

~~~
jasonlotito
He's not referring to debates as being the problem. Quite the contrary: "In
the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology —
whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the
same way after reading the comments."

Civility does not mean blindly agreeing. It means just that: acting civil.

However, what he does argue against is rudeness and insults. Essentially, not
debating, but slinging mud.

"Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make
study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater
than they’d previously thought."

Simply put, you can act civil even if you disagree. This does provide value.
However, when that civility is removed, the results are polarizing.

If you can't see the benefits of civil debate, you are an idiot.

~~~
friendly_chap
Your last sentence ruined it, seriously.

~~~
jasonlotito
Actually, I want to thank you. For making my point, better than I can. Whether
you are being serious, or you understood what I was trying to say, that you
said what you said proves my point.

Just to be clear, I did not really mean this:

"If you can't see the benefits of civil debate, you are an idiot."

It was intended to have a tone completely different from the rest of the
comment. And so, despite the rest of the comment being sound, this one
sentence caused a rift.

So, I did not add it to insult. I added it to make a point, and you
highlighted that point so much better than you realized.

~~~
lutze
I don't necessarily disagree with you, it's a good point well made (it also
made me laugh).

That being said, if you can't handle being called an idiot on the internet,
you unfortunately probably are an idiot (on the internet).

~~~
jasonlotito
That's completely beside the point though, and not the issue at all.

------
mxfh
Full article:

Crude Comments and Concern: Online Incivility's Effect on Risk Perceptions of
Emerging Technologies
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12009/full>

------
quaunaut
When I made this comment, it should be noted that most of the comments were
pretty negative toward the NYT in particular.

Not paying attention to the publisher, I've gotta say that I find myself
agreeing more often than not. Sometimes, comments do great- but anything above
a readership in a couple hundred thousand, and suddenly it all goes to hell.

You'll get a mix of misunderstanding, people inserting their own bias, memetic
derailing bullshit, and a whole lot of people who think they're experts, for
whatever poor reason they found. This isn't because they're trolls, or
horrible people; We all have done it. We all do it. It's being human.

But the problem is, finding the signal in all that noise is just impossible
given our current means of filtering. Different outlets have tried different
ways of getting people to put more thoughts behind their posts- requiring real
names, Facebook accounts, hell, entire companies like Disqus have sprung up
for the exact purpose of trying to foster better conversations. And while they
all make a decent change, none of them even solve a quarter of the problem.

About the only solution I've ever seen, is heavy-handed moderation. But that
opens you up to 'censorship' comments, as we've seen here. Personally, I can't
help but feel like maybe it'd be better if real, substantive stories and
opinion pieces just didn't have comments; If a person wants to respond, let
them go through the effort of making their own blog post, and addressing the
author with it on Twitter or in e-mail. It'd certainly lead to more productive
conversation. It's partly why I wish there were more intellectually-minded
Tumblr accounts, as their format for this is perfect, with reblogging.

This isn't to say comments are all bad, or that they don't serve a purpose.
Just that sometimes, all this social doesn't actually produce better content.

~~~
edwardunknown
The Reddit voting system works fine. On both Reddit and HN I usually learn
more from the comments than the actual article, but I still wouldn't want
comments in the New York Times.

Heavy handed censorship turns rude commenters who should be simply ignored
into internet terrorists, Facebook comments dilutes the conversation by making
people self consciously edit themselves and Twitter or Tumblr replies are like
shouting into the wind.

Good old semi-anonymous Reddit comments still perform though, even with a user
base of millions of bratty kids the best stuff usually floats to the top.

~~~
mercurial
Frankly, it depends on the reddits. The quality of the comments on the bigger
reddits (say, r/worldnews) is often not much above Youtube level.

------
carleverett
Hacker news is a great haven for this. I don't know of any other place on the
internet where such a large portion of the comments are constructive, civil,
and enlightening. It really adds a ton of value to the content itself. Such a
shame that most of the internet is better off just turning the comments off.

~~~
return0
The key is the limited community. Comments are great when the community is
oriented towards something. Generic type comments, just like generic type
social media are useless. In extreme cases, like youtube, the comments
severely degrade the quality of the site (try using a youtube comment
blocker).

------
nemesisj
This article could be retitled to "Why Fox News and Right Wing Talk Radio is
so Effective". Injecting constant insults and rage into commentary is the
secret ingredient.

~~~
protomyth
"Why MSNBC and Left Wing TV Shows are so Effective"

This is not new (go look at some of the early Presidential elections - 1800 is
a good start). The only real difference is that science and technology have
advanced and people's understanding hasn't kept up. We now have a lot more
people commenting on things with whole services built for it.

Its kissing cousin is the "Link Bait Headline". Its basically an aggressive
comment used as a title naming some items or concepts people hold dear.

------
JulianMorrison
Comments on the same site as the article are a terrible idea. It basically
allows every green-ink shouty idiot to undermine what's being said, in a way
that gives them huge undeserved prominence. Just because you said something
_to_ the NY Times, does not mean you deserve to be published _in_ the NY
Times.

The internet permits you to reply to anything - get a tumblr. If your opinions
are valued, you will attract a following.

------
redschell
The idea of constant social feedback on just about everything brought this
classic short story by the late John McCarthy to mind: [http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby...](http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/robotandbaby/robotandbaby.html)

------
whiddershins
But I never read the comments on a news story ... do most people read them?
That is unaddressed in the article.

~~~
paganel
I usually do, not all of them, mind you, but at least the highest ranking
comments. For example that's how I found out that former Italian PM Mario
Monti wasn't that much of a "success" in his home country two months ago, by
reading the top online comments in an Italian newspaper. My only tangent with
the Italian political life was through newspapers and magazines like The
Economist, FT or NYT, and they all were painting a pretty rosy picture of his
job. Sure enough, come election time he got handily defeated.

------
binarymax
Fascinating results indeed. Suppose you are a competitor or have some vested
interest in a specific product failing/not being well received. You could
poison the comments section in the articles that report on said product, using
an army of sock puppets...thereby potentially turning any article into
propaganda that works for you.

~~~
Semaphor
But that's not what the evildoer can learn from this article. He probably has
those sockpuppets already. What is new, is that he now needs to tell them to
curse, use ad hominem and generally be unfriendly.

------
Semaphor
Another interesting thing, if you include a somewhat negative remark about
something the readers care deeply about at the beginning of your article,
something like "paradise was lost because of reader comments", most people
will ignore the content of the article and just argue about that part. As
evidenced right now here on HN.

------
logn
This is what happens when people don't trust newspapers (for good reason).

~~~
jasonlotito
Pretty sure this has nothing do with with trusting newspapers and everything
to do with human nature. It's easier to call someone an idiot than simply
disagree with them and explain why. Couple that with the immediacy and
anonymous nature of the internet, and you give a lot more lazy people the
ability to offer their opinion, even if it's nothing more than mindless
drivel.

People have always disagreed with newspapers. It's just that prior to the
internet, the overhead to respond was much higher.

~~~
logn
My thinking was just that the efficacy of nasty comments is probably higher
when you have readers who don't trust a publication, the writers, or editors.
I think a lot of people assume newspapers are politically biased, but in
reality I think they are biased by their desire to appear non-biased, their
goal to go easy on people to get further interviews/access with them, and also
their role as the mouthpiece for corporations and entrenched government power.

~~~
jasonlotito
> My thinking was just that the efficacy of nasty comments is probably higher
> when you have readers who don't trust a publication, the writers, or
> editors.

I disagree. Oh, I'm sure if you dislike the source, you are more apt to
dismiss them. What I disagree with is the nature of these comments and who
they are coming from.

Nasty comments are most likely coming from people who disagree with the
premise presented in the article, not who is writing the article. There is
also the study that shows that other comments will induce you into taking one
side or another. Any comment you make can easily be just as volatile.

Point is, the epidemic has nothing to do with the source, but rather, the
message. I do not have enough faith that all those nasty comments are from
people who've done proper research into what reporters and newspapers strive
to do.

In the end, it's easier to blame someone else for your failings at civility.

------
NotUncivil
So the lesson here might be to never visit 4chan's board on technology [1] and
the like?

[1] <https://boards.4chan.org/g/> (NSFW)

------
bjourne
"Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make
study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater
than they’d previously thought."

That would mean that, the best way to influence people is to use expletives.
If it's true then there's no wonder so many people are rude on the internet -
it's the best way to get your message across!

------
d4vlx
The tea party uses this to great effect. At one point they had training
sessions where they would encourage people to go online and post canned
comments in an attempt to discredit and delegitimize their political
opponents.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGB8Uuffi4M>

------
mitmads
In sites like Amazon.com, comments and reviews have a big influence on the
consumers. No wonder Yelp was built on reviews.

------
CleanedStar
From September of 2001 to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 the New York
Times treated the world with fabricated story after story about WMDs in Iraq,
by way of Judith Miller, by way of dedicated liar Ahmed Chalabi, whose fairy
tales the New York Times saw fit to print on its front page time and time
again. I kind of like the idea that the vox populi can call them for their BS
under their articles. Of course comments are still invisible until approved by
a moderator.

Incidentally, Chalabi went to MIT and studied under Whitfield Diffie, of
Diffie-Hellman key exchange fame.

