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)
Re:political leanings (Score:4, Insightful)
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--Conversely, browse a rural paper and you'll find quite a bit of commenting coming from a relatively blue/liberal point of view.--
We have one of those here. It actually reports more of just news and lets the reader decide. I don't think it is either liberal or conservative or whatever label that you want to apply, but it sure does have a lot of gossip in it.
And... the local TV stations here are MUCH more unbiased than the national news. The paper here is almost totally unbiased except for the gossip column
This just in... (Score:5, Funny)
Journalist learns that other peoples opinions count. News at 11!
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.
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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.
And there's no other way of measuring interest in a story that might be more accurate, say looking at which stories get the most clicks or moderated comments. Or taking a poll. Or just using your jounalistic insight to know that some people care deeply about issues of race and that fewer care about import tariffs.
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.
It's not like any online comment system is completely non-anonymous. If you absolutely need to say something and absolutely can't reveal your identity, set up a hotmail/gmail/yahoo e-mail accoun
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...
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.
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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.
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I hesitate to point out the newspaper might start to improve, right after the unstoppable process that leads to their deaths, and not a picosecond before.
Being paid more to be less accurate than the Internet worked for them until this point.
On the other hand, slashdot had a story, I believe last week, but I'm too lazy to check, that spoke of growing rounds of mergers/mergers due to financial problems, in the fair realms of newspapers. Perhaps their heat death has started.
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I think the real
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I've been reading blogs and internet news since they started. God damn it, if I have to choose between the Washington Post and New York Times or the political shill-blogs and conspiracy websites, I'm damn well taking the Post and the Times. I'll pay money for their reporting that at least comes closer than anything else to balanced and factual!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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 th
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the Washington Post comment section really is a cesspit.
Well, that's what you get with internet news, complete and utter lack of concern for professionalism or quality. Now, I haven't been to the Washington Post's webpage but my experience with many other online news sites that are based on paper or television news are incredibly sub par. Grammar, spelling, lack of details, it's really appalling that a large news organization can't take the time to properly edit their online submissions (actual articles). And this lack of quality floods over into the comments
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...
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.
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Make a front page article that allows all of us to talk about the moderation system / ask questions and make comments without being 'off-topic' etc. It seems like you see moderation questions leak into the comment section fairly often.
They could maybe do that as a front page story 1 time every year (April First?).
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Hey moderators! I got bags of humor on sale. Only $9.99 a pound. How about some?
You know, It makes the world a nicer place.
Wanna know why it's funny?
Because it's true.
Wisdom of the /crowds/. Bwahahahaha...
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I'll take my two free points any way I can get 'em.
On a related note, whenever I get mod points, I generally scroll down to the end of the page and look for anonymous or unranked posts most people would miss because they simply don't read that far. Am I accomplishing anything by doing this? Probably not.
Let's go, AC! (Score:3, Funny)
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Congratulations.
Re:Let's go, AC! (Score:5, Funny)
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I, for one, welcome our new anonymous flamebaiting, trolling, cowardly overlords.
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.
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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."
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Messed up the link.Should say: This is Abraham Foxman [philipweiss.org]...
Re:Very similar to Letters to the Editor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Very similar to Letters to the Editor (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, I don't want to defend white-nationalism or Stormfront, but I just want to muddy your picture of the issue.
Take this thread [stormfront.org]. This is the Intro to Stormfrontian(sic) white-nationalism which is affixed second to the top of the forum [stormfront.org] for anyone who wants to "know more about White Nationalism".
The main point of the OP seems to be conspiracy theory: "the Jews" control the media and the government and are hurting all the non-Jews, especially whites. So they see themselves at the victims of anti-white sentiment among Jews and "useful idiots" among non-Jews. "Also, I should have been more clear that the Jews are using non-White immigration and Blacks to destroy White America and Europe. They want everyone dumbed down and different Gentile races at each other's throats to prevent Whites from coming together against the Jewish threat" he says.
Notice the other poster, H2H: "Study demographic statistics and future racial population projections and you will see just how dangerous the situation has become. Again, it's not about "hate" or "Supremacy," but SURVIVAL and being able to control our own destiny. ... Remember we are not a "hate group" but a cultural and racial preservation group. In fact we are the true "Multiculturalists" and genuine believers of cultural and racial diversity. By keeping the different races and people separate the world can enjoy the diversity of the human species. ... Although Egypt and most non-white counties have nothing to worry about (except maybe Tibet), it is only White Nations that are invaded and threatened with genocide."
It's seems clear that the general theme on Stormfront is white survival and sovereignty. It does not seem to be fundamentally connected with ruling the entire world as you say. They have this saying the 14 words which is their sometimes motto. I can't remember the exact 14 words, but it's something about securing a future for white children. It doesn't say anything about dominating others. And you're right, you can seem them extolling Nazis and Hitler too. But then you have to remember that they are Holocaust deniers; they just think Hitler was protecting white people from Jewish domination and did not try to exterminate any Jews!
If you go to the forum which the thread was in, the one thread that was above that Intro was about how Barack Obama's church hates whites. Again, there you can see that their focus is on elites being against white people.
The big thread down [stormfront.org] from there is on the question: "Separatist is NOT supremacist?" Notice that the first answer to the question is from "WhitePowerMom": "We want to be with our own. ... I wish no harm to other races, I wish the[m?-ed.] the same purity we strive for. I just want to be surrounded by my tribe. In fact, our way of thinking is probably the most respectful and honorable way possible. We wish to be left alone...and by way of that, to leave others alone."
Anyway, you're right. Stormfront is not like the ADL. I think the poster that compared them did a weird thing. But I don't think white-nationalism is so clearly different from the Zionist, ADL position, as is evidenced by Foxman's comments. That white-nationalists are largely white-supremacists, you're probably right. That white-nationalism is fundamentally white-supremacist, you're probably wrong, as is evidenced by the general opinion on Stormfront about what white-nationalism is.
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Ok, let's be explicit here:
ADL: Defends against anti-semitism, which is a very real phenomena both in the United States and elsewhere. First, note that historically anti-Semitism has been quite common. We even have words in English whose entire meaning derives from massacring of Jews. Examples include "pogrom" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom [wikipedia.org] and blood libel - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel_against_Jews [wikipedia.org] both of which originally were terms about Jews even though they have now been generaliz
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.
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what if these online people express a view that does not flatter one of your advertisers. Would you take them seriously then.
The irony here is that a readership who feels involved in the publication, is probably going to come back more often. For an advertiser this means being exposed to negative comments, yet at the same time have more chance to influence said eyeballs.
Defense?? (Score:2)
Umm why should you have to defend what is a right guaranteed in the constitution?
No one says you have to make sense or add value when exercising your right.
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:Defense?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Defense?? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I also agree with that, except that once a forum becomes public, it should fall under the jurisdiction of the 1st amendment. ( many will disagree with me, but thats ok )
I would argue that the forum in question is public.
I would also argue that regardless of public status if the forum hoster has accepted ANY public funds, they are also bound.
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Just because something on the internet is public, doesn't mean that the administer has no right to moderate comments. It's no different than in the real world. Go to the local coffee shop and see how long you get to exercise your right to free speech if you begin yelling obscenities and/or try to prothlesize to the other customers.
You also overlook the fact that the internet is a worldwide forum. Should a site that is funded by the government provid
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It's no different than someone kicking you out of their house if they don't want you there.
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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.
They're DEAD, Jim. (Score:1, Flamebait)
Uh, maybe Feavered didn't notice (even though it is the subject of his commentary) it but those "exchanges" are edited by politically correct editors who will edit out the most politically threatening
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.
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.
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.
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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
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IAMM (I am a math major), and he did not provide a strawman, but rather a counterexample. Or are you denying that there can be bimodal distributions? For example, the average number of ovaries per person is roughly one, but not that many people have exactly one ovary.
As for intelligence, IQ scores may be normally distributed, but intelligence is far more complicated. Even if we limit it to knowledge of an issue, it is normally distributed? Is it normally distributed for each issue? How would one know?
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His example may be extreme, but there are bimodal distributions, such as the distribution of ovaries among humans. There are also skewed distributions, where the peak does not occur near the middle (the mean, mode, and median are different).
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.
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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.
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What he means is... (Score:2)
This is about money. It's not enough that news be reported accurately from reliable sources, vetted and checked for accuracy. These days it is paramount that the news outlet must show a profit to the parent company that owns the news outlet.
Trying to make this into "I'm now open minded" or "I've rethought my position" isn't the full story.
The business is "show a profit". Not "reporting news" or journalism.
Imagine (Score:2)
Journalists are learning that listening to people might be newsworthy. Or, at the least, indicate where the news might be.
I can handle censors editing out the most obscene language. I might handle censors deleting or editing calls for unlawful actions. I can even handle censorship of the most obscene pornographic material on a public forum.
Otherwise, unmoderated forums are a valuable tool to society, the journalists themselves, and even to government. Anonymous posts have been acceptable since the days
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.
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believers in UFOs
I don't believe that every flying object is identified; it would be quite illogical to do so.
Then again, I don't believe that an unidentified flying object is of extra-terrestrial origin based on its lack of identification either, maybe that's the belief you were implying.
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You're right: he did forget to include nit-picky pedants in the original list. ;-)
You are wrong. EVERY flying object is identified. (Score:2)
The Air Force has these secret radars that can tell the difference between a mosquito and a gnat, and right now they're using them to track all the alien spacecraft that they're not telling us about, because of course you know that the Air Force is really run by a bunch of nigger lesbian feminist illegal immigrants who are secretly in the pay of the international Jewish banking conspiracy. See, if the international Jewish banking conspiracy ever let honest God-fearing white Americans find out just how many
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The Air Force has these secret radars that can tell the difference between a mosquito and a gnat...
Heh. You don't need a secret radar to determine that. Any old radar can distinguish between the two... a gnat's radar return is *much* smaller than a mosquito's. The *really* tricky part is distinguishing between a gnat's return and that of the wind-blown trees outside!
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.
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We are surrounded by those people, and always have been. How much that means we're screwed is really up to your own interpretation. I suppose it's as much as you think we're screwed right now.
The uncommonly intelligent, the free-thinkers, the men who change the world have always been in the minority; whatever progre
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Imagine if the uncommonly intelligent were the majority!
Margaret Mead hadn't met either Bush or Bin Laden. (Score:2)
She was too optimistic. I would paraphrase that to read: "Never doubt that a small group of vicious, ruthless, bigoted bastards motivated by religious zealotry can change the world; it happens all too often." Applies equally well to Al Qaeda and the Bush administration, although the relative scales of their crimes are different.
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> 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.
You may be right about the bias, but that does NOT imply that the opinions are not representative.
> Either that, or we ARE surrounded by ignorant, illogical, paranoid,
> quasi-literate, parochial, xenopho
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"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."
They also vote. Sleep well. :)
And here's exhibit A! (Score:3, Funny)
Can't capitalize, can't punctuate. The shift key is just there for decoration, isn't it?
People like you were extremely few and far between when it was just the ARPANET.
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Yeah... he's pretty lazy, too. Did you notice that he's still pimping his in-progress movie that he completed two years ago?
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I'll take a fair meritocracy over a flat democracy any day of the week, TYVM.
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.
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.
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?
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The first comment on your bbc link says...
"I have benon a few marches but am reluctant to do so any more because of intimidation by the police even when the marches are peaceful and orderly they film you and basically treat protesters as criminals. It seems to me that individually the police are OK and some are wonderful, bu whe
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Even worse than filtering of comments is rewriting of comments. I experienced this first hand in the Los Angeles Times comments section. During the 2008 election I wrote a controversial post and they changed it into something like "Obama is the change we need". What drivel.
The Slashdot comment system is the best. No editing, no filtering, say what you want, and moderation keeps it readable.
anonymous comments: the latest conservative craze (Score:2)
He must have gotten word from Karl Rove. Those guys love anonymous web comments.
By the way, have you guys seen this one? Clumsy British Centipede Stings Itself To Death In Public [wired.com]
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)
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I disagree to you then. "First Post" in essence opens it up for everyone. It's when it's an "NGAA" or whatever troll that there's no value.
Maybe hang around some more, you'll get the drift.
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>If this autorefresh / click to unpause crap doesn't stop soon, I'm outta here.
Go to your preferences and you can kill it as long as you're logged in. Maybe it's all a tactic to annoy users into logging on. It's certainly irritating.
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You now need JS enabled to metamoderate. If you haven't, or won't, you'll be directed here:
http://slashdot.org/faq/UI.shtml#ui700 [slashdot.org]
Of course, if you never log in, this is moot.
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.
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Great posts are often lost at low ratings, and terrible posts get modded up.
Yes, all those AC posts which are apperantly great because they're racist and off-topic are lost!
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If you honestly believe moderation on Slashdot is worthless and a waste of time you ought to try reading some other "social news" site. They all suck worse than Slashdot.
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.
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--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.--
I agree, that's the only way to go. Sometimes it actually makes it easier to find the good stuff that way.
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I too, read /. @-1, because the Flame Wars, Trolls, & Moderator Abuse are often as amusing as the actual discussion and useful comments.
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I have JS enabled, but am blocking certain things via noscript. I get the no-JS error; apparently just enabling JS on slashdot.org isn't enough to be able to metamod. As a result, if they're making me jump through so many hoops to help them out, I just won't bother.
Incidentally, even more sillily, the metamoderation reminder only appears if you have JavaScript off...
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Or just do what I do with every annoying site. Disable javascript. On a properly designed site like this one, you don't lose a single thing by reverting to HTML. And yes, I call this properly designed because it works just fine without javascript, unlike the horde of flash only sites or the ones that seem to force JS to be used as nothing more than a wrapper for an anchor tag.
Thanks to just using HTML, I wouldn't even have known about this new change if not for people griping about it. The site works fine for me, the same as it has for the last 10 years.
NoScript is your friend for this one.
I don't currently disable Slashdot's Javascript but that "pause" feature on the main page is making me want to. Here's my problem with Javascript: it's so goddamned slow. A multi-core system with lots of RAM should not take that long to download and display 10 new story headings. I suppose it could be that Slashdot is slow to perform the network transfer, but when I think about how much bandwidth they must have, I tend to doubt this. I also doubt this because Fir
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