

Comments now cost 99 cents and your name. - towndrunk
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/63730

======
hugh3
Notably and non-obviously, the 99 cents is a one-time fee, so once you've paid
it you're entitled to make as many comments as you want.

But what sort of person is willing to pay to make comments on a local
newspaper? My prediction: the comments section of the Attleboro Sun-Chronicle
will henceforth be limited to a very small number of retired cranks with too
much time on their hands and very large bees in their bonnet about something
or other. Expect to see the same damn thread under every article as the four
usual suspects duke it out over whether the problems of the world are all due
to (a) George Bush, (b) Barack Obama, (c) the Federal Reserve or (d) the
aliens.

~~~
timmaah
That is no different from the comments on most local papers now.

I'm amazed that a company that wants to be taken as a professional source for
journalism allows those kinds of comments on their site. It just looks
terrible to their image and adds nothing to the story.

~~~
vog
_> It just looks terrible to their image_

Comments are from "ordinary people", so why would anyone measure the quality
of an article by the quality of the comments? Does an article become less true
or less readable just because it is followed by some bad comments?

In contrast, not publishing comments would lead to the impression of being
unable to take criticism.

By publishing even the dumbest comments, they show that they _are_ able to
handle criticism, and that they don't suppress anyone's opinion.

 _> and adds nothing to the story_

Comments serve a completely different purpose. While the article reflects the
facts, the comments reflect the sentiment of the people. That's what they add
to the story.

In some rare cases comments even add some interesting facts.

~~~
hugh3
_Comments serve a completely different purpose. While the article reflects the
facts, the comments reflect the sentiment of the people. That's what they add
to the story_

Except they don't reflect the sentiment of "the people", only the small subset
with the time and inclination to comment. This usually winds up being folks
with some kind of extreme opinion or other kind of bonnet-dwelling bee.

------
theBobMcCormick
MetaFilter has a similar system (their onetime fee is $5), and they're one of
the most consistent, stable, noisefree online communities I've ever seen.

~~~
eli
Notably, they also moderate comments and close threads fairly aggressively.

------
Goosey
I think this will work out great for them. Somethingawful.com is one example
of a site which has a pay-barrier to it's forums primarily for the reason to
keeping out trolls. Now you may have mixed opinions over the nature of things
discussed in the forums there, but the maturity of the discourse is pretty
impressive for the size of the audience. The fact that so much of the topic
matter is 'immature' only helps exemplify how effective the system is.

~~~
pavs
I hope you are joking. SomethingAwful is a troll-generating machine. They
didn't make it premium to keep the troll out they made it premium to make it
profitable.

Unless you are just trolling.

~~~
Dilpil
Somethingawful has 100s of forums, all with wildly different rules. Some have
virtually no rules, and are of course filled with trolls.

But of the forums meant for serious discussion, there is far less trolling
than anywhere else on the internet. Not that many people are willing to pay
$10 per troll comment- though they ban people very regularly.

------
patio11
I predict that working out not-so-great with shared credit cards, which are an
extraordinarily common financial arrangement in many American families.
(Perhaps less so among twenty-something techies than the population at large
-- I deal with many, many customers who on their husband's card.)

Worth mentioning: not everyone has a credit card. A requirement that you have
to own a credit card will, in effect if not in design, essentially redline
your service. Reasonable people can disagree about how much that matters, but
I would predict that many newsrooms would go nuclear if you connected the dots
for them on the inability of, e.g., 60% of blacks in Chicago from being barred
from civic participation on $PICK_AN_ISSUE because they don't have a bank
account. (There are prepaid cards to circumvent that restriction. Of course,
the riffraff who are the _intended_ targets of the policy are _also_ capable
of buying prepaid cards.)

~~~
hugh3
60% of black people in Chicago don't have bank accounts?

~~~
andfarm
s/bank account/credit card/ is probably what patio11 meant. No idea how
correct that is, but it's somewhat more plausible.

~~~
hugh3
Still sounds pretty damn implausible to me.

~~~
patio11
The last time I researched the issue the government quoted the national number
at 20%. It skews higher for minorities and low-income people. You're welcome
to your intuitions -- it might only be 40%. Either way, it isn't a small
number or one which is evenly distributed across all demographics.

------
CCs
So here's a startup idea:

Work out a solution to verify the name. Allow anybody to sign up for 99 cent.

Now allow trusted sites (newspapers, Amazon.com etc.) where the feedback is
important access to your authentication.

Let people use alias with the caveat that if there's enough "bad behavior"
report / warning, their true name will be revealed.

This would make the startup the Equifax or BBB of the public forums. "Public
credibility FICO score" and similar services would be next.

It's good for consumers too, soon the 99 c will add up.

When true anonymous comment is required, just send it to a journalist, they
will make sure the person's identity is protected.

------
pkaler
IntenseDebate or Disqus should go with this model and then let me relax
commenting moderation on my blog for paid commenters. It could possibly save
me a ton of moderating effort.

------
drusenko
from what i understand of the credit card system, the name featured on the
card is not checked at all -- at least that's the way it works with our
Authorize.net install.

if this is true for everyone, that means that the person who decided to
implement the system to "check your name" is in for a big surprise when they
realize any name will work with a valid credit card.

someone please correct me if i'm wrong...

~~~
coderdude
You might be right about that. The only information check I've encountered
that consistently seems to matter is the zip code.

~~~
drusenko
Looks like I'm right:
[http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2010/07/04/news/7630...](http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2010/07/04/news/7630031.txt)

AVS checks zip code and/or the number portion of your street address depending
on how you interpret the response.

CVV2 check obviously works as intended. And our experience has been that when
CVV2 is checked, sometimes the expiration date will be checked (although w/o
CVV2 check expiration date is similarly meaningless).

I'm far from an expert here, so somebody else can probably clarify a bit more.

------
tjmc
I wouldn't give a site my credit card just to comment, but I'd be ok with SMS
verification. eg. Provide your mobile number when you sign up and they text
you an unlock code before it works. Alternatively you could text them first to
get the unlock code. The advantage of using SMS verification is it continues
to allow anonymous comments, but it's non-trivial to create multiple accounts
and losing karma/being banned would be effectively permanent.

~~~
eli
How is my cell phone number more anonymous than my credit card number?

~~~
tjmc
You can't automatically retrieve someone's name with their cellphone/mobile
number in the way you can with a credit card check, but admittedly it's not
very hard. Removing the risk of being ripped off is the major benefit over a
cc check.

------
lr
I think this is a great idea, and I wish sfgate.com would do the same thing!
As timmaah says, I, too, am amazed that newspapers allow comments on their
stories, as it just devolves into left vs. right for almost every story on the
site!

------
invisible
They should have made it the cost of a stamp and they would have won more
favor. "Instead of buying a stamp, buy the right to post on our site and you
will be able to write back to the author and editor immediately." Instead they
are charging $0.99 (just to say it's under a dollar?) - basically asking
someone for money that could be spent on more important things.

------
weilawei
I used to receive the Sun-Chronicle. Pretty decent paper from what I remember,
although it's been some years. I'll be interested to see if it works.

An idea: what about using Hashcash instead?

------
duck
I was hoping that was for networkworld.com since the comments on there are
useless. Great idea though, especially for the context of a paper.

------
Ardit20
If every newspaper did this, would that not stifle free speech and lower the
quality of democracy? Aren't the pirates primarley motivated to further
freedom of information when they publish ways to overcome pay walls and such
things.

I think the internet is loosing its way. This site has no pay wall, yet the
quality of discussion is great. Maybe it is not anonymity but the general
atmosphere which encourages trolling.

~~~
jasonlotito
> would that not stifle free speech

No. Free speech is guaranteed, but that does't mean a company has to support
and promote your speech on its private platform.

Considering that commenting on stories is only a recent addition. Might be
surprised to find out that it was kind of difficult to comment on stories to
the public when it was an actual newsPAPER. =)

You still have letters to the editor. You still have options to create a blog
and post your thoughts.

> This site has no pay wall, yet the quality of discussion is great.

Yet it can still get pretty heated at times, and the moderation is pretty
heavy. Also, the audience it attracts is a certain mindset. Invite the same
audience a newspaper gets and it will suddenly get less civil.

