

Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments - martinml
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were-shutting-our-comments

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mscottmcbee
Good. Whenever I visit PopSci I'm amazed at how low quality the comments are.
They felt like they belonged more on Fox News than a science site.

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B-Con
I have similar feelings about article comments in general. Most of it is noise
not worth reading. Exceptions are communities with a specific focus, or
communities where the comments are at least mostly segregated from the content
and easily blockable.

Here's a small plug for my AdBlock browser add-on that blocks most user
comments on the Internet:
[http://mute.bradconte.com](http://mute.bradconte.com).

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captainmuon
This seems so wrong. By giving up, they're just letting the trolls win. I'd
rather keep the option to read and post comments, even if that means that
there is the occasional uncivil one. Heck, I'd even keep the anonymous
comments on Youtube, although they are 90% crap.

There is no need to hide the comments, make them more civilized, unanonymized
or something like that. Rather, what we need is media literacy - the learned
ability to weigh the importance of comments correctly.

There is this thing that they call "shitstorm" over here in Germany (I'm sure
it doesn't mean in English what they think it means). Basically there's some
minor event, and a very vocal minority complains about it on the internet
(esp. on twitter). The media jumps onto the bandwagon, it gets completely
blown out of proportion, and suddenly there's an artificial public outrage.
This is the exact same thing. We have to learn to ignore the vocal idiots, and
filter the important from the unimportant information. This is a social skill
we have to develop. The social development hasn't kept pace with the
technological development.

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MaulingMonkey
We have "shitstorms" here in the USA as well, for what it's worth.

Popsci doesn't have control over whether their readership can filter through
the comments well. As for doing the filtering on the behalf of said
readership... it appears they've decided they either don't have the ability,
don't have the time, or simply don't see enough value in putting up with
wading through shitstorms for every single article. Even if you have enough
self mastery to avoid letting it influence you in the slightest, that's not a
free effort. And for every person who learns the skill, another is born who
has not yet learned it, and may never master it: I wouldn't cast it as a
"solvable problem" at a public-at-large scale.

The goal of trolls is to rile you up, not to get you to close your comments
section. Stopping unmoderated comments is less "letting them win" and more
"not playing their game on their terms". It is less "giving up" and more
"picking their battles". They're still planning to engage with their community
through occasional comments sections, and through other forms of social media.
They'll still have to deal with trolls there. Just, hopefully, less
frequently, in venues where they're more easily comabtable or less toxic.

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astrodust
Interesting that it's a sort of scientific decision based on testing.

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mixmastamyk
Good comments are useful. Perhaps they don't have the resources, but comment
moderation could solve the problem.

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cryptolect
Unfortunately, it's way to easy for a select group to ruin an article with
their negative and factually incorrect comments. In particular for a science
site, I think comments should be restricted, at least from anonymous drivers-
by.

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jacobquick
Unmoderated comments are inevitably a disaster. Shame they didn't look at
previous evidence before deciding to repeat other people's failed experiments.

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kineticfocus
Somehow this feels like going backwards and just ignoring ignorance. Fire-
with-fire I suppose.

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guscost
They actually wrote the phrase "scientific doctrine" without irony.
Unbelievable.

