Comments sections
Greg Mankiw on why he closed comments. What do people think of /.’s moderation system? I don’t comment there much, but I remember people would complain that unpopular views would be moded down too much. Of course, a forced registration would probably filter out the drive-by-tards who can’t be bothered….
Labels: Blog
after reading gregs post, i reflexively scrolled down to see his readerships reaction
http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm600
My gut feeling is that it wouldn’t work here. On the other hand, I think registration alone would be enough. Just make the process of registration moderately painful – a working email might be enough (it’s moderately painful to create new email accounts after the old ones are banned).
Forced registration also filters out drive-by whimsical wisdom.
A Slashdot-like system would only work (well) if you also had a meta-moderation program like Slashdot’s. This would help ensure unpopular views aren’t modded down without justification, and that people moderate reasonably (and are punished/rewarded for their efforts).
Plus, is the user base large enough to justify a moderation system?
End users probably also do not know how much a problem asshole commenters are, since they may be deleted before we see them, so how big of a problem is this?
Plus, is the user base large enough to justify a moderation system?
yeah, this is a major issue.
End users probably also do not know how much a problem asshole commenters are, since they may be deleted before we see them, so how big of a problem is this?
they come in waves. it isn’t a problem for you obviously.
Speaking of blogs without comments sections, Cosma has a follow-up to his post on heritability called “g, a statistical myth“. He gives as an example to explain why he doesn’t have a comments section the reaction to Tyler Cowen’s post on the intelligence of indigenous Mexicans.
having a non-retarded comment section takes work. having a non-retarded comment section when controversial and emotive topics are part of your bread & butter is harder work.
Your posts create your audience and in turn the sub that comments. If most of the posts on your site are “technical” there’s less of a need for heavy handed moderating to cultivate a community.
I remember talking about this with Volokh before he had comments. The method that seemed to work for his site was to selectively enable comments on posts less likely to be a political lightning rod; however some ruthless moderation was required with contributors like David Bernstein drawing readers. I notice comments are now enabled on every post and the average quality is what one would expect in a laissez-faire regime considering the content.
I think gnxp maintains good balance. I try to comment as little as possible in my ignorance as I come here to learn from razib and peterb but some ignorance in good faith can be instrumental in a productive comment thread.
A system like Slashdot does a good job of offloading the moderation to readers but it might be undesirable in a small community. First because it’s necessary to deny comments on a post to the user meta moderating, second because there is less of a problem with bias when moderators are chosen randomly from a large pool of readers.
s/meta moderating/moderating/
The method that seemed to work for his site was to selectively enable comments on posts less likely to be a political lightning rod; however some ruthless moderation was required with contributors like David Bernstein drawing readers.
one of them most irritating things for me is when a reader purposely comments about another post on a more recent thread so that their comment gets more face time. but that doesn’t happen often.
I think /. style Comments would be a boon to this site.
BTW, in relation to comments in general, what I’d love to see, would be a Scienceblogs-esque “recent comments” sidebar – so one could see in an instant what was new – yes I know you have limited time Raz, but just throwing it out there, as someone else might be able to whip this out, or port the one from Scienceblogs over…
paul, let me think about that. the recent comments function was really popular the last time we had it.
My favorite is that guy who always shows up in a thread about topic x to discuss his pet theory about it (he nearly always succeeds in an unmoderated system). One of the benefits of threaded discussion is (i) discussions are separated unlike a flat system and hot button topics are less likely to dominate (ii) in a system like Slashdot the display of threads will be altered by moderation and other parameters (if the default isn’t newest first unworthy discussions won’t snowball). One of the good qualities with positive moderation is that there is less of a need to chill discussion with down moderation, although that could be an artifact of site volume where there are so many comments that no one bothers to read the comments that aren’t up modded
There are also simplified hybrid systems with threads or nested comments and simple moderation (e.g. poll based moderation that changes the color of text)
I think a “request for rewrite” option for blog editors could be a good thing to have. The editor could send a comment back to the associated email, if the comment is flawed in the present form.
“Your comment has some value, but as current it is in need of a rewrite. Please check out our guidelines for comments, and revise your comment in an intelligent and sincere manner”.
I agree with Levi, the watchers need to be watched, so the moderation… actually moderates.
Quidnunc and Levi seems to be reasonable, informed and interested in this topic, I suggest they flesh out a working system.
If their system could be used by myself for restricting my wikidiction, I would be very happy. :D
If the readership base and commentator base is too small for a /. moderating system, what else can be done to promote good commenting, without costing moderators too much time and bother?
Aspergerious, thanks for the idea.
perhaps we could put the comment guidelines here in haloscan instead of the link?
re: threaded, i generally lean against that because it fractures discussion and also i don’t think threads should go on forever & ever.
It’s interesting that moderation/meta-moderation of comments are suggested here. I’m using a third-party commenting system by Disqus, similar to HaloScan, but Disqus seems to have implemented a simple moderating system where people can rate each others’ comments. In this way Disqus builds up an estimate of each commenter’s respectability or `clout’, even if the person is not a registered member of Disqus, by using unregistered commenters’ email addresses to keep track of them.