

Why Comments Matter - cwan
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/why-comments-matter.html

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TomOfTTB
This is worth less to me coming from Fred Wilson. Look, it isn't his fault,
but the reality is I've read Fred Wilson's blog for some time, including the
comments, and 99% of his comments are adulation. They have an undertone of
"You're a VC with money and I want you to like me so I'm going to heap praise
on you"

The second I see Fred Wilson throwing down on Hacker News or Reddit I'll
respect his opinion in this area a lot more But right now he's just having a
conversation with those who love him (or pretend to) and that's something
almost everyone would be in favor of.

~~~
mattyb
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fredwilson>

~~~
TomOfTTB
I stand corrected.

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jerf
I've seen a couple places try things like this, and they are ripped apart by a
dilemma: Either they "support free speech" and let anybody post anything, or
they actually try to create a quality discussion environment, which
necessarily entails some form of message suppression (which doesn't have to be
"deletion", karma works but has its own issues), and get themselves nailed for
"not supporting free speech".

 _My_ personal opinion is that a discussion environment you own, you are free
to censor (though I don't think you should modify other's comments, either
block them or don't), and that free speech is perfectly well maintained when
anyone can easily create their own forums. On the modern internet, it's
trivial to run your own forum. But I highlight the word "my" in that sentence
because there are enough loud people who feel otherwise to ruin your day.

Turning a major newspaper into some sort of actual forum would be a major
undertaking that would require a major amount of pruning, and I can see why
such places shy away from the comment bloodbath that would be necessary before
they could possibly be even a tenth as edifying as reddit.

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credo
I agree with his comments. I just wish Apple let developers respond to user
review-comments in the app store comments section

