In Defense of the Anonymous Commenter 198
Hugh Pickens writes "Doug Feaver has an interesting story in the Washington Post 'in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at the end of articles and blogs.' Feaver says that during his seven-year tenure as editor and executive editor of washingtonpost.com he kept un-moderated comments off the site, but now, four years after retiring, he says he has come to think that online comments are a terrific addition to the conversation, and that journalists need to take them seriously. 'The subjects that have generated the most vitriol during my tenure in this role are race and immigration,' writes Feaver. 'But I am heartened by the fact that such comments do not go unchallenged by readers. In fact, comment strings are often self-correcting and provide informative exchanges.' Feaver says that comments are also a pretty good political survey. 'The first day it became clear that a federal bailout of Wall Street was a real prospect, the comments on the main story were almost 100 percent negative. It was a great predictor of how folks feel, well out in front of the polls. We journalists need to pay attention to what our readers say, even if we don't like it. There are things to learn.'"
The value of First Post (Score:5, Insightful)
I beg to disagree. A First Post is the perfect place to put a reply where it will be seen.
No one reads anything beyond the twentieth or so reply to an article, if you don't reply to one of the first posts it doesn't matter how funny, interesting, or insightful it is, no one will read it.
And it helps if you change the subject line. From my experience, a reply with a new subject line is much more likely to get a positive moderation than a "Re: ... " subject.
Re:The non-value of First Post (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
As one who frequents it...frequently...the Washington Post comment section really is a cesspit. Imagine what you would get if the Slashdot mod system worked in reverse, and people were karma whores for "flamebait," "troll," and "offtopic" tags. It isn't 4chan. But it's amazing that it's on the same site as one of the country's most respectable news outlets.
Of course, Feaver's points would carry more weight if the boards were structured differently. For instance, if WaPo had nested threads instead of a flat message board, you might see more of the "correction" and "dialogue" between different posters than you otherwise do. As opposed to ranting, which is what happens when I...I mean, some person...stands on a soapbox without having dialogue. Empty flames cast into a void.
On the other hand, I'll say with a straight face that I think Slashdot has the best comment section around, if not for the quality of the posters themselves, then because it's good at suppressing and elevating voices based on the wisdom of crowds.
But yet I go back there again and again...
Very similar to Letters to the Editor (Score:5, Insightful)
This type of interaction is what used to be part of the Letters to the Editor section of the newspaper. Before we could spam online forums with our unmoderated comments, newspapers used to publish the best responses to their stories on the old Opinion page.
Nowadays, with that removal of editorial moderation, we are exposed directly to the effluvium and vitriol that was so carefully screened away from our eyes in those old days. Whether this is a good thing or not, I don't know.
What I do know is that opinions of low or nil value are exposed to the light of day. With this shining light most of these errant posters are shouted down and pummeled (figuratively) by right-thinking mainstream posters.
Whether this represents a significant change is debatable, though. Whereas unpublished letters to the editor forced these people to seek out each other underground, the new method still forces these posters to seek out forums where they are the majority. Perhaps it is Slashdot with its geeks and nerds. Or it is Free Republic with its right wingers, or its counterpart LGF. On the extreme ends you have StormFront and the ADL.
The result is a polarization of the web, people talking only to themselves, and less of a conversation than before. When you become a "troll" for holding a contrary opinion, how easy it is to decide to seek out communities that support you rather than shout you down.
but...... (Score:5, Insightful)
what if these online people express a view that does not flatter one of your advertisers. Would you take them seriously then.
Re:Very similar to Letters to the Editor (Score:2, Insightful)
competition with radio (Score:4, Insightful)
The Washington Post has merely realized that it needs to allow ignorant posters their forum in order to compete with talk radio. I have seen little evidence that ensuing discussions necessarily iterate to rational, informed conclusions.
Providing a forum for extreme ideas is a bit like teaching creationism in science classes.
Journalists can learn? No wonder he's retired (Score:0, Insightful)
Geez, doesn't he know that journalists need to teach everyone else the right way to think?
Of course, reach back to your younger days in school. Remember the schoolmates who went into journalism?
Yeah, for the most part they weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, now were they?
Those are the people who supply us with most of our world view.
Scary, ain't it?
More bad journalism... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wisdom of the Commons is Overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
This combines with the most common failure of unfettered democracy, the tyranny of the loud (and perhaps underemployed/bored/obsessed), to create a perfect storm of vitriol, ignorance, and selfishness in places like an open forum online.
Quite simply, people without knowledge or experience in a field deserve less speaking time than those with knowledge and experience. If those people that are excluded from a discussion because they are ignorant or inexperienced want to participate than they should take the time to become knowledgeable and experienced in the field.
I always like to see open discussions but I also like to see comments rated and organized so that I can sift through the crap to get to the gold, something that guyminuslife mentions is missing from the Post's website system.
And to speak directly to a comment from the original article, the fact that the comments show the true feelings of the citizens of this country is interesting from a polling/election point of view but the details of those comments don't add much, if anything to the discussion at hand. This is especially true of indefensible positions like racist or sexist comments.
Journalists should not pay attention to readers (Score:4, Insightful)
Journalists should report the news as objectively as they can. Paying attention to their readers is pandering, and it results in a feedback loop with predictable consequences. We need a thoughtful critical press capable of asking hard questions and not settling for non-answers from those in the news. We need a system in which the President (and others in power) cannot exclude a journalist because he/she asks those hard questions.
Anonymity is an interesting concept, but we should recognize that the guy up on his soapbox in Hyde Park is not anonymous even if we do not know his name.
Re:The non-value of First Post (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The value of First Post (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Defense?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Journalists should not pay attention to readers (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Defense?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Responsibility. Saying something is a right, taking the time to think it through beforehand to make sure that it contributes positively to the discussion is a responsibility. Would that there was a little more responsibility in the exercising of quite a few rights, not just that of speech.
Re:Defense?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Internet comments will terrify you. (Score:5, Insightful)
I started using the Internet when it was the ARPANET. Nice place. Interesting people. Cool projects. Then it became the Internet, then AOL hooked in, and suddenly I discovered that a large percentage of my fellow countrymen are ignorant, illogical, paranoid, quasi-literate, parochial, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-intellectual believers in UFOs.
I mean I knew they existed, but not in such numbers. The Internet is democratizing, and it sure as hell shows what's wrong with democracy.
Downward spiral is profitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Online media, unless operating purely on subscription basis, needs ads. Ads are priced according to unique clicks and time spent on that page by readers (reader's interest). A lot of posts indicate interest. Controversial, or even flamebait articles frequently generate the longest comment trails. Scholarly, analytical articles go with scarcely a comment. Thus the tendency of some online media to adjust their content downward.
This is not a new phenomenon. TV has learned it a while ago - witness daytime shows, Ricki Lakes, Montel Williamses, Jerry Springers, and other tabloid trash programs. The difference now is with the immediacy of feedback, hence this spiral happens much faster. Anonymous posts (and to a lesser degree even nicknamed posts, like mine), only add an accelerant to this process.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
a decade later and big companies still just throw up unthreaded message boards as if they have no idea what will happen.
The print dinosaurs have no idea, no understanding, and no respect for anyone who does.
They're doing too little, too late.
Moderation is a dead end (Score:3, Insightful)
Both metamoderation and moderation are a 100% waste of time on Slashdot.
Great posts are often lost at low ratings, and terrible posts get modded up. Slashdot editors pursue vendettas against various posters, and anonymous posts, regardless of content, are rarely modded at all.
This is a great site, with great content, but the only way to really experience that is to read at -1 and completely ignore the moderation, which simply does not work.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
In Australia there is crikey.com.au that employs journalists and publishes exclusively online, I believe other sites such as the Huffington Post do the same in the States. Get a grip, the newspapers won't die, just evolve away from the paper format altogether.
Re:Internet comments will terrify you. (Score:2, Insightful)
You're right: he did forget to include nit-picky pedants in the original list. ;-)
Re:political leanings (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardly new -- USENET (Score:3, Insightful)
The fundamental problem with moderation is that it inevitably slows and stifles conversation. Often it actually loses creative contributions which really discourages contributors.
Sometimes the slowing might be a good thing. More often, it is thought to be a good thing by people who are more annoyed by undesireable postings than worried about postings that might have been dropped. The underappreciated "false postive" problem.
Re:Internet comments will terrify you. (Score:5, Insightful)
...I discovered that a large percentage of my fellow countrymen are ignorant, illogical, paranoid, quasi-literate, parochial, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-intellectual believers in UFOs.
That does seem to be the picture you get by reading people's opinions online. I find comfort in believing that the sample of opinions posted online isn't representative of the total population since it suffer from a sort of volunteer bias, where the people with the most outrageous opinions have the greater will to express those opinions to a bunch of strangers.
Either that, or we ARE surrounded by ignorant, illogical, paranoid, quasi-literate, parochial, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-intellectual believers in UFOs and are all screwed.
Re:Moderation is a dead end (Score:5, Insightful)
In my personal opinion, there's no other way to experience Slashdot. The folks who don't browse at -1 have no idea what they're missing, or maybe they're the easily offended and want to reduce their stress not by becoming less easily offended (that'd be too straightforward) but by refusing to read the posts that are most likely to be trolls and such.
At -1, I see all kinds of crap and laugh at the prospect that people actually get upset at such blatant attempts to stir shit up, and I also see the more insightful posts. A third thing I see is the very poor quality of some of the moderators. Most of them are pretty good but some of them have zero capacity to handle anything remotely controversial. It's as though they want to live in a world where all 6.5 billion people agree with them on every issue in order to avoid upsetting them, and cannot understand why this would be a horrible existence and would lead to complete stagnation of all ideas.
Anyway, if you don't currently browse at -1, try it on for size. See if you like it. Maybe you won't like it at all or maybe you'll wonder why you didn't do that a long time ago.
Re:Wisdom of the Commons is Overrated (Score:3, Insightful)
Proper grammar, spelling and punctuation really go a long way to informing a reader about the subject. With those three things, along with logical paragraph break-down in a semi-lengthy on-topic reply you are usually going to get moderated up.
Presentation counts for a lot, especially on topics that are complex and not completely understood by the main-stream reader. I understand that content trumps presentation, but I'd much rather read a eloquent post about something that leads me to become more interested in a topic (even if not 100% correct) than non-knowable gibberish that is technically spot-on.
Those wrongly-informated +5s usually are well written. Well written posts are hard to down-rate.