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.'"
political leanings (Score:4, Interesting)
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Interesting)
To ban anonymity is just a simple (and hypocrite) way to repress freedom of speech. Politicians would desire that, for sure.
On the contrary, anonymity is a practical way to express opinions without loosing time in unuseful registration procedures.
Re:Defense?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the whole situation is a bit twisted, since you now need the permission of large media companies to make anonymous comments in a meaningful way. As the Internet becomes more popular, that will become more true.
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
...
Amazing?
Hardly.
Have you ever been involved in anything the Washington Post reports? I have. Twice. Once even made the front page, albeit below the fold. The litany of inaccuracies, half-truths, made-up crap, and downright falsehoods would shock you.
And that's for simple "factual" news.
Wait until "journalists" get to spin news that's related to politics.
"News" as reported by today's media is orthogonal to reality.
So no, "one of the country's most respectable news outlets" really never has been much better than 4chan, and there's no reason whatsoever for you to be "amazed".
Never mind the utter incompetence and lack of fact-checking.
There's a reason why newspaper circulation is dying - it's the internet, but not for the reasons newspaper fanboys think. It's because if today's newspapers were asked to implement standards, they'd misspell the word. The internet allows much wider dissemination of data contradictory to what the mass-media spoon feeds us. And it's that flow of information that has stripped the veneer of "factual news" from organizations like The Washington Post and The New York Times.
One wonders if that veneer was fake all along, and the only reason we used to think newspapers were accurate was the lack of other information channels.
I strongly suspect it was.
But now, no one wants to pay for the "privilege" of having to work to read what you know is all-too-likely to be UTTER CRAP.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Interesting)
Journalists learns which articles that draws the most comments and therefore are the most controversial. This means that they get an indication about what may be disturbing for people.
But sometimes we also need informative articles and not only the disturbing articles.
As for anonymous comments - they may be valid, but it must be possible to moderate those articles to get rid of the noise and the worst forms. And in controversial questions the availability of anonymous comments may be a life saver. It must be possible to express an opinion, at least in a polite way without revealing your identity. The question is sometimes more important than who the messenger is.
Re:Journalists should not pay attention to readers (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
This isn't a truism. Paying attention to readers can lead to pandering, or it can lead to providing factual information that reporters had assumed was well known enough to not need to be stated. I think an interesting experiment would be a paper that does allow comments and pays attention to them, and directly responds to ones that present factually incorrect information or premise conclusions upon it.
Such an experiment might result in much more informed readers and discussion, although it would also be a lot of extra work and might drive away those who are so set in their beliefs they refuse to consider the facts.
We need a thoughtful critical press capable of asking hard questions and not settling for non-answers from those in the news.
Agreed. Moreover, we need a populace that demands answers both from the press and from politicians who refuse to answer direct questions. We need a populace who is willing to vote based upon which politicians actually answer questions.
We need a system in which the President (and others in power) cannot exclude a journalist because he/she asks those hard questions.
I'm not sure our current system isn't the best we're likely to get in that regard. We just need the public to be aware and care enough when t happens and vote the bastards out.
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
You disagree about the value of the comment section. You frequent the comment section. How ironic.
I comment on stuff, even if i think my comments aren't up to par with the editorials, some people might agree with what i said, making it valuable.
If I could, i would use a "-1 made by me" mod point on most of my posts, as they aren't really made in good english and not always relevant... But i can't always be wrong, everyone made at least a good point on something in their lives, hopefully more than once...
Re:Very similar to Letters to the Editor (Score:5, Interesting)
This is , who is the head of the ADL:
"Can you be anti-Zionist and not be an anti-Semite? Almost never. Unless you can prove to me you're against nationalism. If you're one of those unique individuals in this world that's opposed to American nationalism, French nationalism, Palestinian nationalism, then you can be opposed to Jewish nationalism. Is it racist? You bet it is. Every nationalism is racist. It sets its laws of citizenship, it sets its own capital... It sets its songs, it sets its values. It is, if you will, exclusive, and you can even call it racist. But if the only nationalism in the world that is racist is Jewish nationalism, then you're an anti-Semite.. I don't want to make any apologies for it."
Notice how what Foxman says is no different from what the Storm-Front members say about white-nationalism They say: "Yeah, white-nationalism is racism. But you can't oppose it unless you oppose nationalism of other groups: Japanese nationalism, Jewish nationalism, Arab nationalism. If the only nationalism in the world that is racist is white nationalism, then you're anti-white."
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
As one who frequents it...frequently...the Washington Post comment section really is a cesspit.
Agreed. The Post comments are a total waste of time to read. I have stopped looking at them.
Nearly always, the threads degenerate into a pile of worthless partisan, hate-filled garbage. No matter what the story is (war? Gun control? Floods? I mean, ANYTHING) the thread turns into "It's all Obama's fault" or "It's all Bush's fault" or "liberals suck" or "conservatives are evil" or "Bush is an idiot" or "Obama is a monkey." Other unmoderated comment threads, like on Politico, are similar. The posts have no thought whatsoever. It is all two-sentence nonsense. Since they are not threaded, you can't even see what the two sentences are retorting to.
This kind of crap is not worth reading. The author of this article thinks journalists need to take these comments seriously? So, where in the story is the journalist supposed to account for racist garbage directed at Obama, or mindless hatred for conservatives? And journalists are supposed to spend their time sifting through this garbage, rather than developing stories?
NYTimes comments are worth reading, for the same reason Slashdot comments can be worth reading: readers can catch total garbage in stories and call it out. NYTimes moderates the comments so they don't slide into utter garbage. Some of the Times bloggers respond to the comments.
I doubt anyone at the Washington Post reads the worthless vitriol that is in their pathetic comment threads.
Re:I disagree (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Slashdot is also good at suppressing and elevating voices based on the idiocy of crowds.
The difference between say Slashdot and 4chan is that you expect 4chan to be full of error, so truth is a pleasant surprise. On Slashdot, if you let your guard down, and you'll get burnt again and again by groupthink.
As an aside, I like posting anonymously on Slashdot, because it's more satisfying reaching the occasional +5 when you start lower. In net-speak, AC is hardmode, and anyone who doesn't post AC is a filthy casual.
Re:Very similar to Letters to the Editor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the real key to solving the journalism problem, then, is not trying to keep full-time major journalists in business (if they want to stay around, they can compete like the rest of us), but rather, it's about getting rid of badly written libel and copyright laws that make everyone else afraid to post the news they hear about.
Just my
Moderation (Score:4, Interesting)
Makes me think about the moderation (and meta-moderation) process. I've thought sometimes about trying to get an "ask slashdot" post on just how moderators (and meta-m's) rate things.
Re:I disagree (Score:1, Interesting)
It is supremely irresponsible to just throw up an unthreaded message board that allows anon posts and is open to anyone.
I would tend to reserve "supremely irresponsible" for such things leaving an unattended loaded assault rifle on a grade school playground but I do agree that structure is necessary once you start getting more than a couple dozen comments per story.
The Slashdot system works well for a few hundred comments per story but it's an open question how to design a system that works well with thousands of comments per story. As an aside, a Slashdot style system breaks down with thousands of comments because either the scores are capped at +5 in which case you get way to many +5 comments or, if you raise the score cap, only the most generic comments (that everyone can agree with) rise to the top.
BBC Censorship of Opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
These days all of the topics are premoderated and if they don't like your opinion, it won't go up. Those posts pointing out cases of BBC censorship would never have made it onto the website. For example, I made a recent post on the topic of How should the police handle protests? [bbc.co.uk] (coming after a protester died after being assaulted by the riot police). I pointed out that assaults on unarmed and non-violent protesters are routine, that the media knows it and that they are only writing about it this time because someone died. The post was rejected without explanation (as all rejections are).
I firmly believe that members of the public should be able to make posts on news stories without being pre-moderated by some faceless team of people with rather nebulous posting rules. I think if we could make posts on any news topic (e.g. each news item could have a discuss button) on the BBC (or any other outlet) it could really affect the way they report. For example, during the massive Israeli military assault on Gaza earlier in the year, the BBC website was plastered with images clearly showing the use of white Phosphorus. The problem was that despite these clear images, and despite people writing in and pointing it out, the BBC refused to use the term "white phosphorus" for a whole week. Would they have been able to get away with that if the top-rated post under their Gaza news stories was about White Phosphorus being used?