
Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform - mwheeler
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/09/06/mozilla-washington-post-reinventing-online-comments/
======
jedberg
Reddit has had embeddable comment threads for over two years. It was a feature
I actually worked on _nine_ years ago, but the standards weren't there at the
time to make it work with voting.

I know I'm super biased, but I still find Reddit comments the easiest to read
and follow (HN is a pretty close second, especially after they added comment
collapsing).

Is it really just bad marketing it on Reddit's part that keeps others from
using their embeddable comments? As a site owner, you can fully moderate the
conversation by only embedding comments from a subreddit you fully control.
You may not get quite as much data as Mozilla's solution, but in exchange you
get the benefit of Reddit's 12 years of spam data that train its filters.

I just don't understand why more sites don't embed the reddit comments.

~~~
unescape
_HN is a pretty close second, especially after they added comment collapsing_

Isn't comment collapsing in HN the same as downvoting? I find this confusing -
or maybe I just don't have enough karma for the actual downvote button.

~~~
sbierwagen
Collapsing a thread is absolutely not the same as downvoting the parent. It's
just a display toggle.

~~~
ehsankia
On the topic of thread collapsing on HN, I honestly can't believe they still
haven't fixed the performance issue. It's not noticeable on small threads, but
go to one with thousands of comments (like the iPhone X one), and try
collapsing. I've seen threads with noticable 1-2 seconds delay for every
collapse.

------
creaghpatr
Can't speak for WaPo but the New York Times comments sections are absolutely
dominated by a handful of designated 'top commenters' who rush to post on any
major story.

Sometimes their comments are good, but then there's the guy who writes a poem
every single time, or 'Socrates' who posts the same cookie-cutter 'blame-the-
GOP-all-the-way-back-to-bush' comment with the most dramatic rhetoric
possible, trolling for likes of course.

Having said that, I'm pretty satisfied with the Times comment system, everyone
does get a voice even though the top comments are absolutely fixed.

~~~
Pxtl
It seems like a mix of Reddit google's network algorithm could work - don't
just upvote/downvote the post, but lend the commenter's credibility. So
upvotes from hordes of poo-flinging monkeys aren't weighted as heavily from
upvotes from credible sources.

Then the hack: this is a newspaper. They have no reason to be fair. Give
community moderators super-credibility. So they can upvote people and not just
give their comment visibility, but by upvoting they incidentally give them
credibility for future comments. And in turn, those commenters' upvotes are
more powerful as well, thanks to the credibility lent by the community mods.

It creates an echo-chamber, of course... but ultimately, that's what people
_want_.

~~~
inetknght
What people _want_ isn't necessarily what they _need_.

When people's _needs_ are satisfied, they want more of _that_.

So let's satisfy their needs instead. Echo chambers are ultimately self-
defeating as they bring on more divisiveness and intolerance.

~~~
laretluval
Do internet comment sections satisfy any need?

~~~
52-6F-62
If they provide an avenue for topical and reasonable discourse, then yes.

People (at least some people) tend toward the need for discourse to temper and
test their ideas. I mean, you're commenting on HN.

~~~
brad0
What makes HN comments great that other comments systems don't have?

It's the guidelines. By writing guidelines that promote useful discourse you
allow everyone involved to learn more about their own biases and shortcomings.

Every person that writes their opinion grows when reading the varied responses
(as long as they're open to other people's perspectives).

~~~
memeCrasher
Smarter and more insightful commentators.

That's pretty much it. Once the population gets too big and the level of
discourse too low, the intelligent people will move to greener pastures with
better signal:noise ratios. Slashdot's moderation system didn't save them, and
HN's moderation system won't either.

I've yet to see a comment system that promotes signal:noise ratio over
groupthink.

~~~
rocqua
Exactly, HN works because of it's audience. This leads to weird incentives
though, promoting HN to widely might worsen it by diluting the 'good'
audience. Not to forget the discussion about who is part of the 'good'
audience, that discussion is bound to be toxic.

------
thinbeige
After reading this article over and over I am still clueless.

What is this all about? Feature-wise it doesn't sound better than a comment
system from HN, Reddit or StackExchange.

Besides, Mozilla is really lacking communicational skills. This blog post
feels like the documentation at MDN, tedious and unclear.

~~~
chucksmash
> This blog post feels like the documentation at MDN, tedious and unclear.

This feels like an undeserved swipe to me. How many developers prepend their
searches with "mdn" when they need info on browser APIs?

~~~
Kiro
I personally hate MDN. I actually prefer W3Schools. I want straight to the
point examples.

~~~
iza
W3Schools often has incomplete or outdated information.

~~~
Kiro
I don't think that's true anymore. Do you have any examples?

------
tvanantwerp
As a DC-area resident and frequent reader of the Washington Post, the biggest
problem with their comments section is the commenters. I'm not sure how this
helps.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "I'm not sure how this helps."

Better tools to filter out trolls leaves more space for healthy debate.

~~~
Twirrim
> Better tools to filter out trolls leaves more space for healthy debate.

The very nature of US political discourse itself leaves no space for healthy
debate. I'm sceptical that removing the trolls is going to be sufficient to
fix that.

~~~
JacobJans
> The very nature of US political discourse itself leaves no space for healthy
> debate.

I am quite convinced that the nature of US political discourse is largely
determined by the predominant media, and not by the individuals participating
in the discourse.

–– Cable news is incentivized to sensationalize any minor event, and to frame
stories centered around conflict

–– Social media rewards the most emotionally potent messages, consistently
pushing aside calm discourse in favor of messages that hit emotional hot-
buttons

–– Newspapers, magazines, etc have adapted their style of writing in order to
gain more traction on social media, furthering the cycle of increasingly
strong emotional engagement. Sure, newspapers are also often quite
dispassionate, but those stories rarely gain much attention in the political
realm.

–– Social media also increasingly creates identity bubbles, where like minded
individuals can support one another's beliefs. This grouping of people has
lead to identity being the primary consideration; facts are secondary.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> I am quite convinced that the nature of US political discourse is largely
> determined by the predominant media

There are plenty of historical examples of partisan clashes like the USA’s
"conservative versus liberal/progressive" one without a modern media. Just
look at some of the appalling rhetoric between the two parties of the time in
19th-century America, or the clashes between the Blues and Greens in
Constantinople.

Choosing a tribe to belong to and then adapting a harsh “us versus them”
stance seems to be a human universal. Modern media has only capitalized on
something that was already there.

------
Yhippa
I would love to see a big site try to use Slashdot's old commenting system.
Commenting felt like a privilege and so did moderation.

~~~
CodeCube
Slashdot's commenting system was 100% an echo chamber ;)

~~~
jandrese
Ultimately it's very difficult to separate "that's a bad opinion, downvote",
from "troll, downvote". People won't even agree on which is which, especially
the trolls.

If you require someone to post really blatant stuff like "Hitler did nothing
wrong" to be ejected from the discussion, then your discussion will be filled
with ideological trolls who don't argue in good faith but insist that any
moderation to their participation is censorship and echo chamber creation.

Their theory that Global Warming is a big conspiracy demands attention, and
they have plenty of links to "studies" to back it up.

~~~
alethiophile
The exact same set of moderation actions will look like a necessary and
correct restriction on bad actors to one group, while looking like a choking
echo-chamber imposition to another.

The reality is that any social space needs to have a set of norms, including
ideological norms, that are enforced to a degree to ensure they're followed.
The idea of purely "open discussion" is a fantasy; if you ever have something
that feels like that, it's because the participants have internalized the
enforced norms sufficiently that they never run into the enforcement.

The difficult problem is picking out a set of norms that successfully produce
the quality of space you want. Sometimes that is an outright ideological echo
chamber. (In fact, it almost always is, to at least the limited degree that
there is some ideological position that would be rejected without
consideration by the participants and met with hostility. This is a good
thing.) Any talk of "open discussion" must always the include the important
context of "within what boundaries".

~~~
intended
You dont select the norms

You let the people self select themselves.

~~~
jawbone3
Do you mean you should select the majority norms or let the first random
poster exclude everyone that isn't in their subculture?

------
hello_there
Here's a slightly off-topic dream about online comments:

In an ideal comment system I believe that articles, comments and moderation
events should come from three different, decentralized streams (like Atom)
that the end user can subscribe to individually and that are joined at the end
users client. That would would provide transparency to the moderation process,
ability to comment anywhere, and it would allow moderators to become effective
spam-filters without giving them the power of censorship. Now, imagine if this
system was built into the browser and it became the default commenting
platform for all websites...

~~~
ZenoArrow
I like where you're going with this, but here's a question for you... Who
controls the streams that are available on a website? Is it the end user or
the website owner?

~~~
unescape
The end user should always be in control.

~~~
ZenoArrow
You say that, but have you considered the downsides?

Imagine you know someone in the public eye, let's say a musician, with their
own website. They enable comments, and site now has comments all over it that
they have no editorial control over whatsoever. People are posting a high
amount of offensive content. What do you advise that this musician does?

~~~
unescape
The musician can display whatever they want on their website; they don't have
to host content they don't like. In the "dream" commenting system, the
comments are independent; you can apply your own filters and fetch comments
from sources the site owner may not approve of.

~~~
s73ver_
But they're still associated with that site, and that musician.

~~~
unescape
Only in the sense that someone who makes a Wix site that says "Neil Young Sux"
is associated with Neil Young.

~~~
s73ver_
I disagree. I don't think this is like that at all. Especially given now that
comments are displayed on the actual site in question. If you're going to say
it's something separate, then now you're talking about Twitter or, more
likely, Mastodon.

~~~
unescape
If you look at the top-level comment you're replying to, we're describing "an
ideal commenting system", not Mozilla Talk.

------
unescape
Mozilla Talk could be useful if it let me apply my own moderation schema
(filters, blocklists, etc). It looks like another totally centralized
moderation tool:

[https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html](https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html)

The only explanation of their approach is that they did "an enormous amount of
research". This sounds about as convincing as someone claiming "Oh, I took a
class in that."

~~~
wyattjoh
Believe it or not, you can! Check our the documentation
[https://coralproject.github.io/talk/](https://coralproject.github.io/talk/)
where you can use plugins to hook any any part of the commenting process.

~~~
unescape
Are you saying I can run plugins as a site user (not administrator)? That
doesn't seem to be the case.

[https://coralproject.github.io/talk/docs/running/plugins/](https://coralproject.github.io/talk/docs/running/plugins/)

~~~
wyattjoh
As a site admin, not a user. If you see our server side plugin api [1] you can
see ways to extend the graph schema, hook into existing mutations/queries
completed by the system to apply any set of rules or moderation policies you
want. It would be a neat implementation if as a user, you were given the
ability to create your own filters, which would certainly be possible if
implemented via a plugin! But don't expect to do that on WaPo anytime soon.

[1]:
[https://coralproject.github.io/talk/docs/plugins/server/](https://coralproject.github.io/talk/docs/plugins/server/)

~~~
unescape
Thanks for the explanation. I would be interested to help build a plugin that
implements user-local moderation policies, if sites would actually install it.
If that's not likely to happen, then a distributed commenting model seems more
useful to me.

~~~
oh_sigh
User-local moderation will be hamstrung by the lack of data. Sure, you can
block certain users or reorder the results a little bit, but anything
interesting would probably require the server shipping over huge amounts of
data to a client which may never even do anything useful with it, which sites
are unlikely to do.

Your best bet if you really want this feature is to implement it yourself
server-side with just enough knobs to make it useful for your user-local case,
and hope that other sites agree...

~~~
unescape
Individuals publishing psuedonymous moderation would provide the necessary
data, provided privacy concerns can be addressed.

I.e. as I upvote your comment, I publish the info that "user XYZ upvoted this
comment" which you can use in your own user-local moderation schema (at your
discretion).

What we have to avoid is when Potential Employer looks for info on "John Q.
Smith", they can identify which articles he upvoted.

------
yeukhon
Let me distract you from the actual content of the article first (I am sorry),
because I am a little frustrated (I usually don't, and always almost give
credits to the awesome works done by Mozilla; disclaimer: used to be a Mozilla
intern).

This article is too shy from actually showcase the product. Half of the
article is devoted to PR announcement (which IMO is really a waste of time for
most readers, even for the non-technical ones). Just first paragraph into the
article, I had already given up reading through, but instead put my effort in
spotting keywords to understand the motivations behind this new system,
instead of jargons.

The second half is a brief overview of the new system, but only two lines are
relevant to what I was looking for.

    
    
         It’s filled with features that improve interactions, including functions that show the best comments first,
         ignore specific users, find great commenters, give badges to staff members, filter out unreliable flaggers, 
         and offer a range of audience reactions.
    

Then the rest of the bullet points are the usual "privacy" and "open source"
speech which of course are important nonetheless. So I still don't have my
answers (also badges system is really an unnecessary feature for a commentary
system, espeically at the scale of a news site like WaPo).

I suggest next time the writer should:

* tell readers the challenges/flaws in existing system concretely and perhaps showing examples

* the finding from their research participants, the hypothesis ,and how they conducted their experiments

* explain concretely how the proposed system will help address the prominent flaws and issues

This perhaps should turn into a research paper, but even as a blog post it
should have more substances. At best, this article feels like a company
quarterly performance announcement, which I just scan for keywords and move
on, then I forget about all of it. So, what is the point of reading this
anyway? README would have been far more interesting. I am disappointed.

\----

Anyway, I don't really read comments on news sites. I can't explain why
exactly but I feel disconnected and buried (much like what @creagpatr said
about fixed commentary). I'd rather go on FB and comment there, even though
there is a fairly good chance no one can read mine. Perhaps the social part of
FB feels more lively and often comments are funny as hell. Yes, I know that
comments on FB are just as echo chamber as many other places do.

There is a site allows people to take side and debate to death. I forgot the
name though...

~~~
redavni
They did give examples. The Miami Herald, which uses Facebook comments. PBS
Frontline which uses Discus, and Omnivision or something...which I couldn't
find any comments. lol

> perhaps showing examples

------
intended
>New comments and reactions update instantaneously

Killer feature - in that its going to kill the process.

This is chat. Or close enough to chat that its going to be used as chat.

Chat is terrible for comments. A flame war on chat escalates at the rate at
which someone can hit enter.

like the wake of a ship, the comment area will expand, and defeat moderation
ability to clean it up.

Flame wars are bad enough, flame wars on chat which persist like comments are
a bad idea.

Make it update in non-real time.

~~~
memeCrasher
A conversation that a moderator can't clean up, does save you from biased and
unfriendly moderators.

Something I find a lot of people carelessly shrug off - moderation isn't
always a good thing. The act of moderation is, at its essence, censorship.
That's a lot of power to be misused by the wrong sort of people.

(and who is the wrong sort...?)

------
jancsika
Can a client make a request to fetch all the things from a specific comment
thread?

Example: I go to a mailing list for pick-your-favorite-old-grumpy free
software project. I click through the ancient, craggy mailman web interface.
Hey, there's a button that says, "download the full archive (x MB)." Now I
have all the things.

Real World Use Case: The Guardian once deleted some comments on a Greenwald
op-ed because of insert-old-craggy-British-law-here. Archive access would have
empowered users to periodically archive the comments so that they have control
over content they want to read, while the publisher is still able to remove
comments from flow and archive when forced to censor.

------
Nelkins
If anyone was looking for it, the source is here:
[https://github.com/coralproject/talk](https://github.com/coralproject/talk)

------
remir
Why not use machine learning and a sort of "reputation system" to filter out
the noise and trolls? The system could analyse comments, but the users could
also, instead of upvote/downvote buttons, have buttons with reactions such as
"Interesting", "Insightful", "Not relevant", etc...

Some people have informed opinion/interesting things to say and some people
just contribute noise to the discussion. The system can learn both from the
language and reactions from people.

Just like in "real life", if someone is always talking out their ass, you
learn to listen to them less and less because they don't have anything
meaningful to say. It's just noise.

The comment system should do the same. It learns from multiple comments and
their reactions to determine a reputation. Obviously, if your comments are
always seen as "not-relevant" and "toxic", then your contribution is worth
less than other "insightful" and "interesting" contributions, so past a
certain threshold, you stop being able to comment.

~~~
colordrops
Seems dangerous if the rules are not adjusted right. It could end up
amplifying certain narratives and extinguishing others, and causing a divide
between sets of people as they move to communities where they don't get
blocked. Furthermore an AI would be more opaque than a simple voting system,
and could easily be manipulated for unethical purposes. Lastly, this sort of
system would heavily bias towards the mainstream viewpoint, which is a good
heuristic, but the mainstream isn't always right about everything. There is a
place for minority voices. I would posit that the extreme political division
we now see in the US is a result of more powerful systems for influencing
online discourse.

~~~
remir
I get where you're coming from. I guess it depends on how the system is made,
but there's a risk, absolutely.

------
Animats
Doesn't work if you have Ghostery turned on. The Washington Post has 15
trackers, and the comment thing has a cross-site scripting request.

This thing writes many messages to the browser console. The last line
apparently prevents even displaying comments.

    
    
        STARTING Paywall  c4d7fa1f35.js:41:468
        PAYWALL CHECK STATUS:   c4d7fa1f35.js:42:331
        "PWAPI URL: https://pwapi.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/09/12/state-department-official-quietly-visits-moscow-to-discuss-north-korea/?rplapisplit=1&referrer=https://www.washingtonpost.com/"  c4d7fa1f35.js:42:405
        PAYWALL ACTION: 0  c4d7fa1f35.js:43:138
        PAYWALL URL: N/A  c4d7fa1f35.js:43:218
        PAYWALL SUB: Unsubscribed  c4d7fa1f35.js:43:292
        PAYWALL METERED: Metered  c4d7fa1f35.js:43:393
        PAYWALL METER COUNT: 4  c4d7fa1f35.js:43:498
        PAYWALL MODE: 1  c4d7fa1f35.js:44:49
        PB Debug: Fired comment_count_target.init:[object Object]  c94e09db1d.js:381:443
        boomerang.nt: [info] This user agent supports NavigationTiming.  wprum.min.js:1:10101
        pt.fetchStart: 1505251033854  wprum.min.js:1:10803
        boomerang: [debug] Checking if we can send beacon  wprum.min.js:1:10101
        boomerang: [debug] Sending url: //rumds.wpdigital.net/metrics/?rum=%7B%22redt%22%3A0%2C%22nl%22%3A285%2C%22dns%22%3A0%2C%22tcp%22%3A0%2C%22rest%22%3A195%2C%22domt%22%3A904%2C%22uplt%22%3A3052%2C%22url%22%3A%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fjosh-rogin%2Fwp%2F2017%2F09%2F12%2Fstate-department-official-quietly-visits-moscow-to-discuss-north-korea%2F%3Futm_term%3D.b5cb34fc201d%22%2C%22site%22%3A%22www.washingtonpost.com%22%2C%22title%22%3A%22State%20Department%20official%20quietly%20visits%20Moscow%20to%20discuss%20North%20Korea%20-%20The%20Washington%20Post%22%2C%22domn%22%3A940%2C%22section%22%3A%22opinions%22%2C%22cntt%22%3A%22blog%22%7D
    	v=0.9
    	u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fjosh-rogin%2Fwp%2F2017%2F09%2F12%2Fstate-department-official-quietly-visits-moscow-to-discuss-north-korea%2F%3Futm_term%3D.b5cb34fc201d
    	if=  wprum.min.js:1:10101
        PB Debug: Fired sticky-vertical-sharebar.collides_with_main_content:false  c94e09db1d.js:381:443
        PB Debug: Fired nav.start_close:true  c94e09db1d.js:381:443
        PB Debug: Fired nav.finish_close:true  c94e09db1d.js:381:443
        Comments load: timer startedtwp-comments.js:1
        [Echo.UserSession] error : Unable to initialize user session, error response from IdentityServer API received  | args:  Object { response: Object }  499c2b4a02.js:294:297

------
elihu
How do users authenticate? Do they need to register for an account and give
their email address to every website they want to comment on?

This seems like it would have been a good use-case for Persona, but that
project was cancelled; is there any good replacement these days, besides the
ubiquitous "sign in with your facebook account"?

------
foxhop
Comment systems are tricky, everyone has an opinion on how they should work
and how they should be moderated. Its very similar to forums and community
building.

I was so opinionated about my comment system I decided to build my own called
Remarkbox ([https://www.remarkbox.com](https://www.remarkbox.com))

Its embed-able like discus but I want it to feel more like hacker news or
reddit (deeply nested threads). My system is still a work in progress but I'm
actively dog fooding it on my own websites and so far its working well.

One major take away I've learned from this thread is that people really like
to use the collapse feature here on hacker news and reddit to narrow in on the
conversations they care about. I actually never used this feature on either
site (I didn't even know what that [-] was on hacker news until today)

------
tasty_freeze
I've always been frustrated by the Washington Post comment system. Many
articles have hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand comments. When I revisit
an article, I can sort by newest/oldest/highest replies or something like
that. I can go to my user profile, select "my comments" and view my recent
comments (though not in the context of the article they came from). For the
comments I left where someone replied to me, I have no way to reply to them,
other than to return to the article and hit "show more comments" 100 times and
locate my comment and the reply so I can reply in turn.

I hope the new system fixes that. It is otherwise about impossible to hold a
conversation, so it reduces the incentive to leave a comment in the first
place.

------
algesten
> Talk is small — about 300kb — and lightweight

This makes me feel old. Is 300kb really considered small these days?

~~~
explodingcamera
Not really, 300kb for a pwa seems sane but for just for a comment system? That
seems incredible bloated.

~~~
pvdebbe
Not just 300 kB of downloadable code, it's 300 kB of executable code. That's
huge

------
hartator
Shouldn't they be focusing on the browser?

There is literally a good hundred of solid solutions out there for web
commenting - hosted, embedded or app libraries -, and Talk doesn't seem
innovative at all.

~~~
KajMagnus
Here's one that innovates a bit, when it comes to browser side features, e.g.
making large discussions simpler to navigate: (I'm developing it)

[https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-
comments](https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments)

(example feature: click the arrows to jump to the parent post and refresh your
mind, then click "Back" to jump back down & continue reading. But haven't
ported the Back button to iframes yet.) (submitted yesterday, got zero
attention :-/ )

Maybe for the staff at the newspaper, moderation features are more cool
innovations, because that's what _they_ will be using the most?

------
peterjlee
I think to have good comments, you need to build a good community. I sometimes
see the same article shared across HN, Reddit and Facebook. Some sites have
better comments than others..

------
deafcalculus
I remember a time when commenting seemed like a weird idea. Why would someone
write on your site instead of on their own site? And then dynamically
generated pages and eventually social networks took over. I wonder if the
internet would be a better place if everyone had their own websites and
RSS/Atom feeds rather than the centralized services we have today.

------
freeflight
Wouldn't the easiest approach to this whole "issue" be to give every user
access to individualized blacklisting tools? Just put a "This comment makes me
angry" button next to each one and people who feel offended can click it to
hide said comment and check a box to hide any future comments from that
commenter.

There, problem solved with no need for fancy machine learning algorithms or
other institutions to play big brother for the internet commenting culture.
Voting based systems generally seem to do a pretty decent job most of the
time, especially when the community can be segregated by topics/interests like
on Reddit.

~~~
dmckeon
Usenet news user apps had individual blacklisting (and whitelisting and
scoring) "killfiles" in the 1980s. They made reading popular newsgroups more
tolerable, but did not scale in the face of "endless September" (1993).

If a site allows a near-infinite number of anon or sock-puppet accounts,
individual or even distributed blacklisting amounts to trying to empty the
ocean with teaspoons.

If posts or comments were strongly associated with an individual identity,
then a _distributed_ scoring system could help produce a more useful set of
content, but would be likely to make an echo chamber. But, the scoring system
could be gamed by persistent vandals.

Also, anonymous or persistent pseudonymous posters may contribute valuable
content - how can one allow for that content but defend against abuse?

~~~
freeflight
There's always room for improvement, like making blacklists shareable,
AdblockPlus does this with their filter lists, afaik Twitter has, or at least
used to have, a feature like that.

Even simple measures, like preventing multiple accounts being registered to
the same email address, can already greatly cut down on the trolling potential
of most garden variety trolls.

Nothing about this "problem" is new except for the perceived scale due to
Internet-access having become widely available and more people being exposed
to Internet culture, but the problem itself is pretty much as old as human
interaction in general: How to deal with people whose views seem to be utterly
incompatible, even offensive, to mine?

Germany has been down this road for quite a bit longer, the only result so
far: Comment culture is dying out, in many places it doesn't even grow in the
first place anymore because there's isn't even the chance for it, as more and
more site operators decide not to implement comment options at all because it
puts them in muddy waters, legally speaking.

Censorship is never an option, even less so when it's outsourced to some
unaccountable entity, even worse when it's some machine learning algorithm
where nobody understands how it actually works but people rather like the
outputs they got from their inputs, it's basically a censorship blackbox.

Honestly, I don't see the need for any of this and it's quite scary how this
kind of authoritarianism has become so popular in past years. We used to look
at China as a negative example, something we would never want to emulate, this
has changed and now increasingly politicians are openly voicing their opinion
that a system like China's might actually be "good".

Maybe it's just me having gotten a thick skin for this kind of stuff, after 20
years on the net, but I neither see the need for any of this nor the "good"
this is supposed to do, all I see is lot's of potential for making the
Internet a worse place for open discussion, especially across ideological
lines. All I see is yet another move towards more echo-chambers and less
diversity of opinions. Which is important regardless how shitty some of those
opinions might be, they can always serve as a bad and educational example,
censoring them out of sight like they don't even exist, does none of that.

------
heroprotagonist
I love Mozilla's efforts and I think this is an important area to improve.

But, as petty and selfish as it sounds, I wish it were built in my development
language of choice. Then I could modify and use it myself, or contribute,
without that irrational dirty feeling.

I know, node is very popular, and no disrespect to you if you use it. It's a
personal failing. I just can't put my personal time into it any more. When I
see a great project I get excited, and search out the source to see what it's
written in. Then I often feel disappointed. Maybe I need to gain some
flexibility.

------
jessriedel
Are there any notable new techniques used here, whether social or technical?

~~~
KajMagnus
I got the impression that there are some improvements with moderation tools
and banning / blocking people, that is, things that aren't directly visible to
the reader.

Here's an alternative to Talk, with some new features / "techniques"?,
directly visible to the reader: [https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-
comments](https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments)

E.g. makes large discussions simpler to read / navigate, by using arrows,
which one can click, to jump to the parent post (if it's far away), and then
Back to jump back down and continue reading. (I'm developing this.)

------
davidy123
Comments just aren't a very good approach if the point isn't to just pass
time. Annotations are much better. Systems like hypotheth.is are slowly
becoming more pervasive.

------
camus2
Back in the days I thought that what made the Huffington Post popular,
politics aside, was its gamified commenting system which I though was
excellent. Since then of course, it degraded UX wise until it was replaced by
Facebook comments(horrible UX) and something completely useless today. At the
end of the day what makes the difference between a good community and a bad
one is tight moderation without censorship and focus.

------
schemathings
I think it would be interesting to see a filter that generates something along
the lines of Amazon.com's Statistically Improbable Phrases, or "SIPs", the
most distinctive phrases in the text of books, but for articles, and then
tracks how closely the comments line up for that particular article .. might
be a good indicator for authority ?

------
gkya
I believe it's better to have discussion happen elsewhere, as in HN, Reddit,
Usenet, &c., or in blogs and columns. This is cheaper for the publisher, and
often those communities generate better discussion as they are comprised of
more interested individuals with more genuine participation.

~~~
_rpd
It isn't better for the publisher though. The longer that they can keep
eyeballs at a site that they control, the more advertising they can sell.
Commenting also allows the publishers to collect more demographic and
psychographic data, which allows the publisher to charge advertisers more per
view/clickthrough.

~~~
gkya
I really hope we will devise a better way to monetise online publishing,
because ideally as a reader you'd want to keep your eyeballs at a site for the
shortest amount of time possible.

------
tambourine_man
Off topic, but this is the first time I see _two_ slightly different sandwich
menus on the _same page_

------
EasyTiger_
The top of HN for an article which says nothing much at all, really?

~~~
KajMagnus
Interestingly enough, I submitted something similar yesterday, about another
open-source commenting system with different features:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15242630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15242630)
— it got zero upvotes, although i think it's a bit interesting to read, for
those interested in online comments. And the Mozilla post got > 500\.
Interesting how HN works, ... and the accumulation principle.

------
binthere
> It’s fast. Talk is small — about 300kb

Hopefully that's not the client size

~~~
KajMagnus
Here's one that's 150 kb Javascript on page load, instead of 300 kb:
[https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-
comments](https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments) — and innovates a
bit when it comes to features for the readers. (I'm developing it.) Disqus
seems to be 600kb (I summed the size of the "disqus" scripts on a blog that
uses Disqus).

------
tyteen4a03
Any NRK-style pre-comment quizzes?

~~~
dredmorbius
NRK???

~~~
tyteen4a03
Yes, they've launched a beta tool that forces people to take a quiz before
they're allowed to comment to ensure they actually read the article:
[https://nrkbeta.no/2017/08/10/with-a-quiz-to-comment-
readers...](https://nrkbeta.no/2017/08/10/with-a-quiz-to-comment-readers-test-
their-article-comprehension/)

------
lewisl9029
> _You own your data._

I was super excited when I came across that first sentence in bold (italics
here) on one of the points under "Here’s what makes Talk different".

Wow, I thought to myself, does this mark yet another step in the revolution of
the re-decentralization of the internet? Is Talk a product sharing the same
ideological foundations as awesome projects like Sandstorm
([https://sandstorm.io/](https://sandstorm.io/)), Matrix
([https://matrix.org/](https://matrix.org/)), remoteStorage
([https://remotestorage.io/](https://remotestorage.io/)), Solid
([https://solid.mit.edu/](https://solid.mit.edu/)), and many others that I'm
doing a grave injustice to by not mentioning here (please do remind/enlighten
me in the comments if you're aware of others!), that strive to give back to
users the ability to control their own data to whatever degree technically
feasible: where it lives, who has access to which pieces of it, how they may
access/manipulate it, under what circumstances, and for how long, etc, etc.

The concept of apps built on user-provided and user-controlled data-sources,
envisioned by projects like these, has always been immensely appealing to me.
If users truly controlled their data, and only granted apps access to the data
they need to function, instead of depending on each individual app to host
user data in their own locked-off silos, then switching to a different app
would be a simple matter of granting another app access to the same pieces of
data! Lock-in would completely stop being an issue!

Imagine that! We could have a healthy and highly competitive app ecosystem
where users choose apps by their own merit instead of by the size of their
moat built on nothing but network effects. Newcomers could unseat incumbents
by simply providing a better product that users want to use! Like a true free-
market meritocracy!

And then I read on:

> Unlike the most popular systems, every organization using Talk runs its own
> version of the software, and keeps its own data. Talk doesn’t contain any
> tracking, or digital surveillance. This is great for journalistic integrity,
> good for privacy, and important for the internet.

And I realized, No, they were not talking to me, a lowly user hoping against
hope to one day live in a world where we can truly own and control access to
data that rightfully belongs to us. Rather, they were talking to platform
owners like Washington Post, loudly proclaiming that with Talk, that _they_
get to own _my_ comments, _my_ profile, _my data_ , and that somehow it is
"good for privacy, and important for the internet".

Sadly, this is just yet another data point in the unrelenting trend in silo-
ization of user data, and stopping that trend is becoming more and more of a
distant dream because both newcomers and incumbents today realize the massive
competitive advantage lock-in and network effects afford them. Incumbents will
never give up their moat and allow the possibility of interop without a fight,
and newcomers all end up racing to build up their own walled-off data silos
because they have ambitions to become an incumbent enjoying a moat of their
own one day. Even products that are built on top of open protocols and allow
non-trivial interop tend to eventually go down the path of embrace, extend,
extinguish, once they reach any significant scale.

Regardless, for this particular instance, my rational mind realizes that
platform owners are the group that Mozilla must appease and market to, in
order for Talk to stand any chance of success, and that Talk as a product is
definitely the lesser of many evils in the same space, and that fundamental
change usually manifests itself as a series of small, incremental
improvements, much like in this case where an open-source, privacy-respecting
product manages to defeat numerous much more deeply pocketed and deeply
entrenched rivals to secure a foothold in a competitive market. But as a
longtime Mozilla Fanboy, however irrational it may be, I can't help but feel a
little bit betrayed when _even they_ are forced to send messages like this in
a painful compromise that confirms my lingering suspicion that we're still a
_long_ way off from winning the battle for a user-centric internet.

------
snakeanus
It would be nice if they would drop the account system and just let the users
post their comments signed by their private key if they want to associate a
comment with themselves or their persona. It would also be nice if they
supported NNTP for commenting and reading comments.

Moreover I think that it would be great if it worked without any js (or if at
least worked with addons like librejs) - knowing mozilla however they will
probably not care about these.

------
manbearpigg
It's an echo chamber propaganda tool. It lets the content creator choose which
comments are seen.

------
mobilefriendly
Mozilla -- the organization that fired its CEO because it disagreed with a
political donation he made in California -- lacks credibility when it talks
about building an "open society".

~~~
intopieces
"Brendan Eich was not fired. After his appointment, there was backlash from
the Mozilla Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did. The
Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation; they did not "remove
him because of his views." If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't
have given him the job in the first place. Resignation (after only 11 days in
the CEO role) became the only viable path forward when a sizable portion of
the Mozilla Community refused to follow the person that the Board designated
to lead the organization. That wide refusal and rejection fomented the issue,
and Eich's decision to maintain his public stance on gay marriage -- as is his
right -- created an impasse. It is incorrect to say that he was fired or
removed; it is fair, though, to say that he was forced out."

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-
ce...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ceo-brendan-
eich-deserve-to-be-removed-from-his-position-due-to-his-support-for-
proposition-8/#5f72f8602158)

~~~
xienze
> Brendan Eich was not fired. ... He came under pressure to resign and he did.

So in other words, he was told if he didn't resign he'd be fired. Let's not
play games, he wasn't going to survive that episode.

> The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation

I seriously doubt that, unless checking a person's political donations is a
standard course of action Mozilla takes -- which would open a major can of
worms (you didn't promote me because I donated to Trump). The whole episode
reeked of someone digging around and raising a stink shortly after he made a
highly visible move -- otherwise, why did no one in the "community" take issue
with his donation in the several years prior?

~~~
intopieces
Eich had an oppertunity, in that moment, to speak of a change of heart. That
change of heart regarding same sex marriage is one that millions underwent in
a very short period of time. Instead, he said this:

“Eich also stressed that Firefox worked globally, including in countries like
Indonesia with “different opinions”, and LGBT marriage was ‘not considered
universal human rights yet, and maybe they will be, but that’s in the future,
right now we’re in a world where we have to be global to have effect’.

It is most certainly standard to check the political donations, statements,
and affiliations for the person you are promoting to CEO. This is not a mere
promotion from SDE; this is the face of the company, and a company that
specifically touts inclusion as a core tenant.

------
mythrwy
You don't need to go to the comments sections of Washington Post to find
trolling. There is plenty in the articles, particularly the opinion section.
Of course they are mostly trolling Donald Trump lately so some people don't
mind.

------
ArchReaper
Why should anyone care? I don't see anything technically novel or interesting
in this.

Edit: I'm not disparaging this, I'm asking a question...

~~~
jimnotgym
I am happy to see an alternative to Facebook comments.

> Talk doesn’t contain any tracking, or digital surveillance.

> Talk is small — about 300kb — and lightweight

Both are an improvement over FB IMHO

~~~
gog
I realize that this could be considered lightweight by today's web standards,
but to me this is still huge.

~~~
r1ch
I hope that 300KB refers to the backend code size, since one of the selling
points is organizations run their own version. There's no way you need 300 KB
of frontend code to render HTML from a database.

~~~
jandrese
Import a JS Framework or two and you'll easily blow that 300kB.

------
StevePerkins
I started by reading the comments section here on HN. Couldn't find any solid
information about what this Mozilla thing actually is.

So I broke down, and clicked the link to actually read the source article.
Still couldn't find any meaningful information about the thing.

At this point I considered this a personal challenge. So I clicked the link at
the bottom of the article, to ITS original source
([http://coralproject.net/](http://coralproject.net/)). Still couldn't find
any solid non-marketingspeak information about the thing.

The Internet in 2017, folks. It's just turtles (comments) all the way down...

~~~
abiox
can't tell if this is serious or not.

~~~
KajMagnus
Some people here at HN might be young people who are just getting interested
in tech and internet stuff. The one you replied to might be a super bright
young person, who just doesn't recognize all company names, just yet. ... Hmm,
but when s/he says "this is year 2017" then it seems to me as if s/he has been
around for a while, and likely would haven seen "Mozilla" before. :- )

B.t.w., Steve (the grandparent poster): Mozilla makes a super famous browser
named Firefox. That's maybe the main reason "everyone" knows who they are.

