

The threat facing online comments - 1337biz
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9c0cf256-e197-11e3-b7c4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz32cyddExJ

======
mixmax
The problem isn't bad comments - it's the publishers that don't understand the
medium.

The article is a great example of how most newspapers and old publishing
houses are barking up the wrong tree. It talks about using real names, court
decisions and expecting people to read and comply with guidelines. That's
simply not how the Internet works.

I see plenty of examples of excellent comment sections - often better than the
article. HN is an example, some of the subreddits I'm subscribed to another.
Interestingly I have never seen an old media outlet that has mastered
comments.

The problem is that old media (or at least the people at the top) don't
understand how to solve this problem because it involves a heavy dose of
technology. I've never heard terms such as hell-banning, karma and vote-ring
detection in a discussion by old media houses. Heck, many of them haven't even
mastered threaded comments yet.

It's a problem that can be solved by a savvy combination of technology and
psychology, but the old publishing houses seem to be clueless about both.

~~~
stinkytaco
You assume it's a problem that needs solving. I don't know what the general
feeling is, but I tend to prefer the model of going to one place for the news
or information and another (like Hacker News or Reddit) for the commentary. I
don't feel the need to read comments at the CS Monitor or NY Times (though the
Times has a good comment section in general) or any other "long form" site. I
go there for thoughtful, in depth analysis by someone who's put time into
thinking about the issue.

Part of my problem with comments is that they are rarely thoughtful or in
depth, even at a site like this. They are what I'm writing now: a short
snippet that's more like a back and forth conversation than a thoughtful
analysis. Both have their place, but I don't see the need for them to coexist
on one site.

~~~
001sky
_Part of my problem with comments is that they are rarely thoughtful or in
depth, even at a site like this. They are what I 'm writing now: a short
snippet that's more like a back and forth conversation than a thoughtful
analysis._

Alot of intelligence comes from bringint together simple--but relevant--pieces
of information...or distlling simple--but essential--lines of logic from
inpenetrable source material.

~~~
stinkytaco
Like I said, there's value in conversation. I'm here at HN after all.

I just feel that conversation belongs in places that specialize in
conversation (and all the spam handling, moderation and community management
that entails) and not on sites that cannot get it right.

------
JacobAldridge
I certainly see a distinction between Comments and Conversations, and probably
spent many years online struggling with online interactivity features before I
realised it.

I honestly see little value in the former, which seems to be the prevailing
mode on news sites, in facebook groups etc. Opinions being like assholes (ie,
everyone has at least one), I suppose I must be grateful so many people choose
to share theirs in a location where I will never inadvertently bump into it.

Conversations, however! Where people will read my response (and I theirs), and
possibly provide feedback, support, constructive criticism, or some other form
of _dialogue_ (from the latin meaning "two assholes"[1]) - when that's
underway, I don't miss pre-internet days at all.

 _[1] Citation needed._

~~~
insky
They are pretty much the same thing though.

A comment on something like a news story page, is a conversation with the
author about the article pretty much.

Conversations that take place without threading are tricky to follow without
additional tools.

I'd prefer ontopic comments. Interesting conversation can errupt from
interactions though.

My biggest issue with online comments is that there are just too many. cap
amount of posts, or cap posts by author?

Some people hang around the comment sections and just can't help but post. And
some just repeat what others have already said and bring nothing new. But I'm
not surprised that people haven't waded and read through every comment before
they comment.

My local online newspaper has the same small collection of people regurgating
their predictable opinions on pretty much every article posted, and it's very
tiresome, and puts off other people commenting. They are a negative and
contrary bunch.

I understand the want to hang out in a particular internet locale (I do it on
two forums, my online haunts), but people could do with holding themselves
back. On one forum I'm a member I've postend about 400 comments, and I could
probably boil that down to about 5 themes. If I had time it would be worth me
whittling them all down. Less is sometimes more.

------
instakill
This is going to be quite an important ruling. Libel laws are different in
every country but this could be quite an influential precedent for many future
rulings. It may very well have a large impact for a lot of websites with both
comments and user-generated content.

If websites choose to enforce a system whereby commenters have to sign up with
their verified personal details, many people may be put off and conversation
rates could dwindle. This in turn may reduce traffic and said websites may
suffer from it.

Some websites may choose to forgo commenting systems altogether because they
may be too strapped to enforce such a system, or they may be risk-averse and
wouldn't want to have their necks out anymore after this ruling.

A big problem is that a slander lawsuit may hit any time and the only things
you can do to prevent it is to moderate the hell out of your UGC. That may not
be feasible though. Business insurance against this kind of scenario is crazy
expensive and as a business cost may be unrealistic to most. One of the people
that co-run a decently sized e-commerce store in South Africa told me once
that one's best bet is to have enough money on hand for a lawyer because the
insurance will cripple you.

Over at [http://www.mybema.com](http://www.mybema.com) I've played around with
many ways around this sort of issue. Right now, negative consumer reviews
cannot be seen if you visit the site. Only the category of the review can be
seen. In fact you can only see the review if you sign up and subscribe to the
author. However I doubt that provides any sort of defense because legally
slander is slander once another party is exposed to it. Alas, my pondering
continues...

I don't know about EU or the states but in South Africa there have been
rulings like the one in the article where the plaintiffs had their cases
thrown out because it would be unreasonable for the media owners to moderate
every comment made.

What do the other UGC platform owners on here think? How do you manage these
kinds of scenarios?

~~~
stinkytaco
My local paper (a paper in a smallish Midwestern city) did forgo commenting
systems and doesn't seem to have suffered for it. In fact, I think it makes
reading the online version of the paper better.

Their argument was more about quality, at least publically. The comments were
a cesspool of backbiting and misinformed readers using the medium to make
themselves heard and the paper basically said: "If you've got an opinion you
want published and are willing to put your name to it, you can send us a
letter and we will consider it for the op-ed page." I frankly think this was a
mature way to approach the issue.

~~~
stuki
Like any other scheme to make commenting more expensive (resource wise), it
implicitly makes the assumption that the value of what one has to say, somehow
correlates with how much resources one has at ones disposal to be heard.

In the web era, the most important job a publisher has to ensure his site is a
good one, is to write and edit content in such a way that he attracts an
audience of interesting readers. Who will in turn, offer interesting comments.
It is not, as may have been the case earlier, to hire the "best" journalists,
to write their version of the truth. Sites that still use the latter approach,
rarely, if ever, reach the level of truly interesting, simply because no one,
or small group of, writer(s) will ever cover all bases, the way a whole
community of interested and interesting commenters will.

~~~
stinkytaco
I pointed this out in another comment, but I don't see why content and
community have to coexist on the same site. Sites like Reddit and HN leverage
the power of hyperlinking to merge the two models so each can do what they are
best at: creating content for news sites and moderating and curating for
social sites. I don't want to see what a bunch of wackos write in the comment
section of my local newspaper. They added no value and the very few comments
that did were not worth the overhead. HN has a community of interesting
commentators, but it still relies on journalists to provide the basis for that
community.

------
jcromartie
I find it fascinating that people feel entitled to comment sections. There is
genuine _outrage_ when sites remove their comments sections.

When anybody can publish a URL commenting on another URL, the web is working
exactly as it should. The missing piece is a meta-comment system (maybe some
microformat) that lets you know when someone else is explicitly commenting on
your URL.

Let's say I post a YouTube video (and there is no comment section), and
someone else writes about it on their Tumblr using a format using an anchor
tag with a rel=comment or something. Then the meta-comment service (where I
have registered my YouTube channel and the Tumblr user has registered their
blog) notifies me that this person has commented on my video. I could publish
a reply on Tumblr to their original Tumblr post, and they would similarly be
notified.

A page on the meta-comment service or a little JS widget could even show the
comment reply tree across sites.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I remember encountering something like this when playing around with my
Wordpress blog:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback)

Any idea why it didn't find adoption on a wider scale?

~~~
jcromartie
I think that a protocol or standard is part of the solution, but it really
needs a service (or any number of them) to track the whole graph of replies.

~~~
stuki
The kind of aggressive court interference talked about in the article, will
(or at least should) be the catalyst to make that happen.

Anonymous comments really ought to be hosted anonymously and in a distributed
fashion, preventing them from being taken down or "used against you." The
"fire in a crowded theater" supposed exception, is simply not relevant wrt
internet comments.

------
djur
I'm curious if there's any research supporting the claim that requiring real
names increases the quality of comments.

In my anecdotal experience, most sites that require real names (or Facebook
logins) tend to have just a handful of comments, most of them banal. With
Facebook comments in particular, there's no sense of community -- just
disconnected statements.

And some of the most hideous, abusive remarks I've seen online have been under
someone's real name and next to a picture of their face. At this point, the
image of a nice-looking older person cuddling their grandkid next to a racist
all-caps rant has become so commonplace that it no longer shocks me.

------
amr
Good discussions online happen in established communities, something news
websites don't know how to build.

~~~
privong
In support of your statement, see the recent discussion on why online
communities decay:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7790755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7790755)

------
alelefant
The author writes:

"The borderless nature of the web means it can be hard to avoid the ranting
bigots and creeps we would ordinarily shun in the real world."

While I understand his point, I believe this is one of the great things about
online communities. I think many people are too quick to shun those who we
disagree with (I know I'm guilty of this). I think there can be a lot to learn
from those we vehemently disagree with.

------
0verc00ked
I can't help but notice a market opportunity evolving out of the need to
moderate comments. I imagine a service where sites could hire cheap, proven
moderators - and pay based on the number of comments needing review.

Two-sided marketplaces are undeniably extremely hard to build, but seeing as
this is a huge problem and something tons of websites need, maybe it could be
successful in this case.

Anyone know of anything out there like this/think this could work? I guess
there's MTurk.

~~~
krapp
The only problem I can see with this is any site popular enough to need
regular moderators could probably get away with offering moderation for free
to their members, just for the cachet of being mods. Most of the rest of the
possible cases (small personal blogs and forums, which may cost nothing or
almost nothing for their owners) probably wouldn't be willing or able to
afford the fees, or want to give privileges to some random person on the
internet. Professional sites like online newspapers and businesses will want
to farm it off on an intern or someone in house.

It seems to me that it would certainly be a difficult thing to make money at
but if you can establish a reputation then it could potentially work. Although
then in a few years everyone will be complaining about how this service is
crushing free speech across the internet.

------
paulgb
If you hit the paywall this link should work
[https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=aZSAU9qoL...](https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=aZSAU9qoLcqa8AGP44GYAQ&url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9c0cf256-e197-11e3-b7c4-00144feabdc0.html&cd=1&ved=0CCcQqQIwAA&usg=AFQjCNGBGX3UZdRomoTQBLQ2nh5BYkn1_g)

~~~
octoploid
This can also be automated with a simple script:

    
    
       // ==UserScript==
       // @name          FT Free articles Hack
       // @namespace     
       // @description   redirect FT to content via google
       // @include       http://*.ft.com/*
       // @include       http://www.google.co.uk/url?*
       // ==/UserScript==
       
       var s = window.location.href;
       if (s.indexOf('google')>0){
               var mylink = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
               mylink[0].click();
       }
       else{
               if (s.indexOf(',Authorised=false')>0){
                       var t = s.substring(s.indexOf('s/')+4,s.indexOf(','));
                       var y = "http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F";
                       var z = ".html";
                       window.location.href = y+t+z;
               }
               if (s.indexOf('registration')>0 && s.indexOf('location')>0 ){
                       var y = "http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url=";
                       var z = s.substring(s.indexOf('location=')+9,s.indexOf('&referer'));
                       window.location.href = y+z;
              }
       }

------
Falkon1313
The problem is that a ruling like that does nothing to address the actual
issues and instead punishes only the one party who did nothing wrong.

(A) is incompetent at managing their own reputation, (B) chooses not to
communicate in a civil manner, (C) is incapable of forming their own opinion,
so reacts negatively to (A) based on (B)s comment, and the one that gets
punished for it all is (D).

------
bkfh
Coincidentally, me and my friend are working on making online comments smarter
and overall simpler by providing a feedback structure. See more here:
[http://www.orat.io](http://www.orat.io)

Bloggers can embed orat.io Comments on their blog by simply adding two lines
of code or using the WordPress plugin.

Any feedback to this highly appreciated!

------
tim333
It's a bit of a worrying precedent. The test case was fairly trivial with a
£270 fine for users calling a company that was about to plow their road
“fucking shitheads.” But establish the law and you risk having folks like the
Koch brothers sue you for $1m because someone on your site has called them or
one of their organisations dishonest or some such.

------
jds375
An interesting solution to troll comments would be auto-detection via Machine
Learning. For a class final some friends and I wrote an algorithm (neural
networks and SVM's) to detect intentionally deceptive comments on hotel-review
sites. It worked with about 82% accuracy. I'd imagine something very similar
could be done with troll comments.

------
noir_lord
I read the front pages of a bunch of different newspaper websites
(thedailymail, guardian, mirror etc) as it's interesting to see what they are
all focussing on.

I use adblock to block the comments sections on each as I find them just
completely useless (I also do the same on youtube and a few other sites).

~~~
DanAndersen
Along those lines, I recommend a Chrome extension called "Shut Up" [0] which
hides most sites' comments by default. I have it allow comments for a few
sites like HN but most of the time I know I'm not missing much.

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

~~~
pyre
What would be the point of hiding comments on HN, where the entire _point_ is
the comments?

~~~
DanAndersen
Hence why I enable comments on HN. But most sites are mostly article+comments
and in those cases the comments are often pointless.

~~~
pyre
Is it just using some sort of heuristic to determine the comments? I was
thinking that that might have 'rules' for each site individually, which would
make no sense for HN (because why bother for a site where the comments are the
whole point).

------
hkmurakami
It seems that quality dialogue amongst users happens in communities where the
people have a decent amount in common. (The more civilized reedit forums are
smaller, niche places, and places like hn or gaming forums are similar). Are
news sites simply too broad in audience to ever get past this, perhaps?

------
tabcantab
It's not difficult to use machine learning to do a good job of moderating
comments automatically. A general method has been patented since 2001:
[http://www.google.com/patents/US7200606](http://www.google.com/patents/US7200606)

------
fivedogit
While working on WORDS for Chrome
([http://www.words4chrome.com](http://www.words4chrome.com), soft-launch
6+8=14), I've done a lot of thinking about the problems with web comments. In
short, it's two things:

1\. The Clean Slate Effect - the ability to go from site to site being
horrible everywhere, no centralized consequence mechanisms

2\. The Too Much Trouble Effect - Creating a new account and giving up your
email address yet again sucks. How long will the comment last? Will it be
searchable? Does it use your real name? Whenever comments are Too Much
Trouble, only crazies leave them.

WORDS doesn't have any comments in it yet and I'm still tinkering and testing
getting ready for launch, but I'd appreciate your opinions on it.

------
WalterBright
> frequently ferociously uninhibited comment sections

And that's what's great about free speech!

------
tom_jones
Maybe an answer would be to allow anonymity on the web but only as a legally
registered pseudonym. The only way this legally registered pseudonym can be
revealed is in legal action against a comment on conviction. That way people
can have the right to anonymity so long as they stay within the law.

~~~
wyager
>The only way this legally registered pseudonym can be revealed is in legal
action against a comment on conviction.

So they would convict you before they knew who you actually were? Awesome. No
need to defend myself, I guess!

How about instead, we respect the concept of free speech, and allow people to
say whatever ridiculous shit they want without threatening to imprison them if
they say something that makes us uncomfortable.

> That way people can have the right to anonymity so long as they stay within
> the law.

What does that even mean? If the system is designed with the express purpose
of allowing the law to punish you for something you said, it's not anonymous.

------
001sky
_Last year, for example, Popular Science, a 141-year-old American magazine,
took the radical decision to banish comments from its website. Its editors
argued that internet comments at the bottom of an article, particularly
anonymous ones, were undermining the integrity of science and led to a culture
of aggression and mockery. "_

Sometimes ill-conceived pretension warrants "agression and mockery"\--and
sometimes scientists can be among the worst offenders.

------
graycat
Looks like the author of the OP should look at HN.

------
just_observing
"Bad behaviour online is so common that it has generated its own typology of
abuse. “Flaming” is to engage in a deeply personal and angry war of words
across an online discussion."

So common? Does this journalist have no knowledge of Usenet? It's not common,
it's older than most websites these days. To suggest Flaming and Trolling are
unique to comments is false. They predate comments by years.

~~~
was_hellbanned
I think it's safe to say that modern Web commenting utterly dwarfs the entire
history of Usenet posting, making the latter pretty much irrelevant except as
a historical note.

Look at the article's definition of trolling. They use "troll" as a codeword
for "asshole". Real trolling is an art. You put some bait on a hook and see
who bites.

