
Online comments are broken. What alternatives exist? - anigbrowl
Back in the 90s, I was at the forefront of the push for media outlets to add the ability to comment to news articles, in the belief that this would enhance public dialog - a belief which turns out to have been wildly mistaken.<p>The primary problem I see now is that news articles are collapsing under the weight of their own commentariat. A few minutes ago, for example, I was reading an article at The Hill, a popular political reporting website. I was about to comment but decided it would be a waste of time given the already high volume of comments. Having the day off, I went to take a shower instead. 15 minutes later there were an additional <i>750</i> comments.<p>Please note that I&#x27;m not addressing the content or sentiment of newspaper comments (poor as the former or disagreeable as the latter may be to any given reader). The sheer <i>volume</i> makes meaningful discussion impossible, and without meaningful discussion social spaces become little more than vessels of mob containment. Does anyone have ideas for how to address this?<p>* Please avoid falling into standard &#x27;liberal vs conservative&#x27; mudslinging, I&#x27;ve avoided discussing specific content because this strikes me as a general problem rather than one limited to people of a particular political orientation.
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echolima
I am wondering if comments should be broken into two categories: 1. only show
comments from people who live in my area/region. 2. only show comments from
the higher rated commentators.

The reason for the geographic region is to promote communication and ideas in
a more localized meaning.

As to higher rated commentators, why not a rating system for commentators?
Amazon does this, to some success.

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anigbrowl
I've always thought that last was a good idea. It'd be easy enough to
implement on fb I think.

