1019: "First Post"

[Ronsonic]

Of course this plan fails when your hired college kids succumb and start racing each other to post "FIRST!!!!!!11"

[bmonk]

Where do these dollar amounts come from? 1.5 Million seems awfully cheap..

Don't you know? 91.36% of statistics on the internet are made up on the spot.

The thesis flaw is that nobody reads comments.

Comments are there to write in when you disagree with the article.

An article that you can't disagree with is an article that goes unread, hence the comments. To draw readers of the article.

I didn't read the comments, but I disagree with your post.

[Spoom]

This comic is why reading CNN articles, especially in the politics section, is painful; I have to stop myself from reading beyond the end of the article because the comments are crapflooded so quickly and thoroughly, it's ridiculous.

[charlesmaxwell]

"reddit's new comment sorting system" - Randall Munroe

http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system.html

[webdude]

I've always wondered why news stories even have user comments. The easiest way to fix such a problem is to just not have comments. It's a news story, not an opinion piece.

Are you kidding? Much of what passes for "news" contains multiple opinions and interpretations, rather than bare facts. Add in the misinformation, disinformation, dissembling, outright lies and statistics, and you have "all news, all the time" - code for "maybe it's true, maybe not - take everything with a grain of salt unless you trust the source." Trust the NY Times? Gee, I seem to recall several scandals about b.s. journalism occurring there. The Post? WSJ? LA Times? Pulitzer winners? Ditto.

Unfortunately, that word made me think of Rush Limbaugh. "Ditto" used to be a decent, respectable word, until Limbaugh's sycophants turned it into a watchword for their community.

I was already thinking of Fox "News" with their b.s. slogan, "Fair and Balanced." What a crock! Here's an exercise to think about: a camera crew visits a stadium. They record the following scenes: workers making & serving food, bathroom lines, fans buying souvenirs, a small historical exhibit at the stadium, etc.,etc., a couple of drunken yahoos fighting in the stands, etc., etc. Which scene makes the evening news? 50,000-100,000 thousand people at the stadium, mostly behaving themselves, and if a scene is aired, which one is it likely to be?

For extra credit, how will Fox slant the story? How will MSNBC slant the story? ABC, CBS and NBC?

[cream wobbly]

It's not comment ordering that's at fault: it's who you trust to be part of the conversation.

1. Kill sockpuppets: new users can only post replies, cannot post originating threads or rate others' comments
2. Community moderation: reputation is enhanced by others' ratings
3. Reward good behaviour: users with consistently good ratings post with a higher initial rating

If 2 and 3 sound a lot like "karma" on /. then you have the right idea: that /. would be improved by adding #1. Imagine that. Now you can see that sorting doesn't assist in burying the spam and the trolls; so let the user decide how to sort comments.

[jalohones]

I've always wondered why news stories even have user comments.

To generate advertising revenue. Refreshes of pages count as hits, and also load different random ads.

[cream wobbly]

Much of what passes for "news" contains multiple opinions and interpretations, rather than bare facts. Add in the misinformation, disinformation, dissembling, outright lies and statistics, and you have "all news, all the time" - code for "maybe it's true, maybe not - take everything with a grain of salt unless you trust the source."

Obviously, there is a demand for news narrative; but instead of satisfying that demand with genuine news analysis programmes, the news outlets have muddied the waters and are pushing narrative as the bald news.

There was a question put by the New York Times recently, "Should The [New York] Times Be a Truth Vigilante?". Basically, they woke up to the fact that they, along with every other major news outlet, had lost sight of their core function to society. It is clear that, over time, they had been hoodwinked into accepting Fox News as a peer, instead of looking down upon it as a glorified tabloid. In competing with a tabloid, they had lowered their standards of reporting; arguably without lowering their standards of credibility.

And of course, the way forward, in an environment where there is less space for news and more for analysis and opinion, the solution is to present the news and the analysis up front; but make the distinction.

[cream wobbly]

There was a political protest in an area with no parking, so the protesters met in a community college parking lot, and took buses to the protest. The highest rated comment in the newspaper was purportedly written by a community college employee who was horribly disadvantaged on her way to work by, among other things, all of the extra parking lot use.

The astroturfer could have gone on to write about how horrible the rest of her day was, since the community college was closed that day.

Was she paid that day? That's the make or break for me.

You missed the point: "she" was not an employee. "She" was lying. "She" was claiming she was unable to attend work because of the protest -- on a day when her place of work was closed.

[Fire Brns]

There was a political protest in an area with no parking, so the protesters met in a community college parking lot, and took buses to the protest. The highest rated comment in the newspaper was purportedly written by a community college employee who was horribly disadvantaged on her way to work by, among other things, all of the extra parking lot use.

The astroturfer could have gone on to write about how horrible the rest of her day was, since the community college was closed that day.

Was she paid that day? That's the make or break for me.

You missed the point: "she" was not an employee. "She" was lying. "She" was claiming she was unable to attend work because of the protest -- on a day when her place of work was closed.

Ok, I see your point. Just to double check: Was the college closed because of the protest?

Also the word astroturfer just peeves me. I tend not to use slang made popular by politicians or old people.

[endolith]

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE METHOD OF COMMENT SORTING, FRIEND?

Highest voted first, but votes are weighted by a trust network.

To me, the most fun part is watching the opposition try to derail your comment storm with their own comment party storm. Those dicks.

the Ronpaul 2012!!!

The thesis flaw is that nobody reads comments.

I do. In fact, I often skip over the article and read what people have to say about it first.

Comments are there to write in when you disagree with the article.

Or if you agree with it. Or if you want to add to it with something personal and relevant.

How about sorting posts by IP address, allowing viewers to easily filter out spammers, assholes and those without a decent grasp of spelling and grammar.

That's a good way to shut up any real person who doesn't want to be identified by their IP address, sure.

[ahammel]

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE METHOD OF COMMENT SORTING, FRIEND?

I think random order has it's advantages:

1. It mitigates the problem highlighted by the comic. In order to guarantee highly-placed favorable comments, you have to be paying most of the commenters.
2. It's simple.
3. It would be pretty funny if you adopted random ordering without telling the commenters first.
4. I imagine (although I have no data for this) that it would make trolling more difficult.

[UserGoogol]

I'm kind of tepid about the whole idea of nested posts in general. Single-threaded posting allows for a more natural conversation format since people can reply to posts informally, and to multiple posts simultaneously. And single-threaded posts absolutely have to be in chronological order for any sort of coherent conversation to happen.

And even if you suppose that threads are going to be nested, eh, I kind of like chronological. Any thread where people can't reasonably be expected to read every single post is fundamentally too damned long and should be broken up in more severe ways than just nesting. And once a thread is kept sensibly short, the order you read them in doesn't matter too much. And even with nesting, chronological posting still encourages a more organic process since it makes the order quasi-fixed, (you can refer to a post "further down the page" and people will all know what you're talking about) and since you can mix formal replies with informal replies.

[webdude]

...the news outlets have muddied the waters and are pushing narrative as the bald news.

There was a question put by the New York Times recently, "Should The [New York] Times Be a Truth Vigilante?". Basically, they woke up to the fact that they, along with every other major news outlet, had lost sight of their core function to society. It is clear that, over time, they had been hoodwinked into accepting Fox News as a peer, instead of looking down upon it as a glorified tabloid. In competing with a tabloid, they had lowered their standards of reporting; arguably without lowering their standards of credibility.

And of course, the way forward, in an environment where there is less space for news and more for analysis and opinion, the solution is to present the news and the analysis up front; but make the distinction.

Well said!

[gormster]

Also the word astroturfer just peeves me. I tend not to use slang made popular by politicians or old people.

I've only really heard it used by independent journalists. After all, politicians are the ones who do the astroturfing, and old people don't really do memes.

[gormster]

That's a good way to shut up any real person who doesn't want to be identified by their IP address, sure.

If someone thinks their IP address identifies them in any way, perhaps we're better off without their comments.

[endolith]

If someone thinks their IP address identifies them in any way, perhaps we're better off without their comments.

lol wut?

[radtea]

I think random order has it's advantages

Yeah, pretty much. Why should every person see the same view? It's not like the page isn't generated dynamically, and I'm sure the moment anyone suggests there's a buck to be made showing users different views it will done in a moment. So why not do it to improve the quality of the commenting system?

[radtea]

I'm kind of tepid about the whole idea of nested posts in general. Single-threaded posting allows for a more natural conversation format since people can reply to posts informally, and to multiple posts simultaneously. And single-threaded posts absolutely have to be in chronological order for any sort of coherent conversation to happen.

I find this attitude astonishing. Staggering even. You seem to be living in a world where there is no way for users to choose what sort of comment presentation they want!

[Fire Brns]

Also the word astroturfer just peeves me. I tend not to use slang made popular by politicians or old people.

I've only really heard it used by independent journalists. After all, politicians are the ones who do the astroturfing, and old people don't really do memes.

Nancy Pelosi was the first person on TV I ever heard say it (she is both old and a politician). Also it's a buzzword; buzzwords are most often used by inarticulate people of low IQ to win an arguement they cannot hope to through traditional use of prose. And I don't trust internet slang.

[CorruptUser]

$20/hr? I wish I could make that much, and I'm a grad student.

[Red Hal]

..., and old people don't really do memes.

[SecondTalon]

Pfft. You're not old. You're only.. what, 75? 98? 145? Come back when you're properly old.

[richard233]

There are always going to be problems with filtering out a vocal minorities comments vs the comments of the people at large.
I'd suggest that you need to filter based on a few things.

1) A moderator needs to exist with the ability to view all comments from a user. If the comments on every board are near identical and do not
relate to the news article then they get purged from the system. If they relate, you allow them a limited # of postings per day/article.

2) You require cookies to help identify the source machine. You use this to reduce the level spammed comments. IP addresses can be faked.

With regards to Fox news, I find their news to be as credible as CNN and company. I take opinion pieces to be just that. If I find a commentator who
spews nonsense I tend to not bother reading them anymore.

I guess the real trick is we need to teach people how to actually weigh and evaluate what they are reading.
If I have a 1000 people spew nonsense at me I'm still going to disregard it. I do want to be open to new ideas and views, so I
will often give a polite poster a chance to make their point. People that scream and curse and bring religion into it tend to get canceled.

[busyba]

FIRST!

[Red Hal]

Pfft. You're not old. You're only.. what, 75? 98? 145? Come back when you're properly old.

Just calibrating the scale, ST.

[J Thomas]

There are always going to be problems with filtering out a vocal minorities comments vs the comments of the people at large.

Yes, and a vocal minority that can disguise itself as a majority will overwhelm any filter you use, unless you bias your filter in favor of people you agree with.

1) A moderator needs to exist with the ability to view all comments from a user. If the comments on every board are near identical and do not relate to the news article then they get purged from the system. If they relate, you allow them a limited # of postings per day/article.

If you have an unbiased moderator who's good at handling spam from all sources, that's a very good thing. Of course, he needs to have plenty of time to do his job.

2) You require cookies to help identify the source machine. You use this to reduce the level spammed comments. IP addresses can be faked.

Cookies can be faked too if the fakers go to enough trouble. But that is another level of defense. If you're an oyster in a sea full of starfishes, it doesn't hurt to have a thicker shell.

I guess the real trick is we need to teach people how to actually weigh and evaluate what they are reading.
If I have a 1000 people spew nonsense at me I'm still going to disregard it.

Signal to noise ratio is a big deal. If I have to wade through 1000 nonsense comments to get to one that's worth reading, I'll give up. Life is too short. And then the spammers win, because for them shutting down the communication is almost as good as dominating it.

I thought it would help to have like and dislike buttons. People who can just click "like" don't have to make a whole new post saying the same thing. But it doesn't help with comment-spammers who will do both.

If you had a moderator who was good at classifying ideas, he could put similar posts together in one pile and you can read the ones that say the same thing until you're ready to stop. But that requires even more from your moderator.

You could put posts in competition to say the same thing. If somebody says what you want to say, but you think they didn't say it well enough, you could write a competitive post and then people vote on who said it best. But comment spammers are likely to vote for the opposing post they think is least coherent. And they'll still post lots of comments that all say the same thing.

You could let people vote on whether posts are redundant, and if you trust the other voters you could ignore posts which they say are too similar to what you've already seen. But again the comment spammers will vote to say their posts are not redundant, and they will cheat if they possibly can to make it look like there are thousands of them.

The central problem is that there are a lot of people with bad will, who will try to subvert any procedures you set up. I'm not at all clear what can be done about them.

One obvious choice is to arrange public identities. For example, if everybody reveals their facebook pages, then comment spammers who want to pretend they're a hundred different people will have to arrange a hundred fake facebook pages. But this has its own problems. If you have to reveal who you are, you could be punished for saying things that somebody else doesn't like. For example, if you say something that sounds critical of Israel, you may face a concerted effort to get you fired from your job, or get your mortgage foreclosed, etc. Unless you're independently wealthy it's far safer to present your opinions anonymously even when they're opinions you firmly believe that you will only say once.

[endolith]

If you had a moderator who was good at classifying ideas, he could put similar posts together in one pile and you can read the ones that say the same thing until you're ready to stop. But that requires even more from your moderator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering

One obvious choice is to arrange public identities. For example, if everybody reveals their facebook pages,

Isn't this what everyone is already trying? Ugh.

[Quicksilver]

..., and old people don't really do memes.

Is that supposed to be Nicolas Cage from Vampire's Kiss?

[ahammel]

Is that supposed to be Nicolas Cage from Vampire's Kiss?

So sayeth the good folks at Know Your Meme.

[hamjudo]

There was a political protest in an area with no parking, so the protesters met in a community college parking lot, and took buses to the protest. The highest rated comment in the newspaper was purportedly written by a community college employee who was horribly disadvantaged on her way to work by, among other things, all of the extra parking lot use.

The astroturfer could have gone on to write about how horrible the rest of her day was, since the community college was closed that day.

Was she paid that day? That's the make or break for me.

You missed the point: "she" was not an employee. "She" was lying. "She" was claiming she was unable to attend work because of the protest -- on a day when her place of work was closed.

Ok, I see your point. Just to double check: Was the college closed because of the protest?

Also the word astroturfer just peeves me. I tend not to use slang made popular by politicians or old people.

The protest was scheduled for a holiday, so it would minimize interference.

[J Thomas]

If you had a moderator who was good at classifying ideas, he could put similar posts together in one pile and you can read the ones that say the same thing until you're ready to stop. But that requires even more from your moderator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering

Oh joy. So, you can filter out the comment spammers by filtering out people who disagree with you, and you'll automatically get them too except for the ones who happen to be on your side.

Wouldn't it be easier to just have a bunch of sites that moderate away people who disagree with them, and you go comment on the sites you like?

One obvious choice is to arrange public identities. For example, if everybody reveals their facebook pages,

Isn't this what everyone is already trying? Ugh.

Yes, and come the revolution or the government crackdown, you may be among the first up against the wall. Be careful what you say -- you could pay heavily for it.

[Fire Brns]

The protest was scheduled for a holiday, so it would minimize interference.

Ok, thanks. We need to know all the circumstances to make a proper judgement.

[gormster]

If someone thinks their IP address identifies them in any way, perhaps we're better off without their comments.

lol wut?

It's late and I'm not going to bother referencing it but IP address has been found to be about as accurate at identifying a person as a psychic. It might identify a computer, if you are extremely lucky.

[bigjeff5]

If someone thinks their IP address identifies them in any way, perhaps we're better off without their comments.

lol wut?

It's late and I'm not going to bother referencing it but IP address has been found to be about as accurate at identifying a person as a psychic. It might identify a computer, if you are extremely lucky.

It's pretty trivial to track an IP down to a city, and it's usually pretty easy to get as far as a neighborhood. From there to a physical address is pretty tough without convincing the ISP to help, but if you can get ISP support then identifying the houshold is trivial (and you can skip the whole mess of tracking to the neighborhood level).

Identifying the household is, for purposes of privacy/harassment concerns, more than good enough. For legal concerns, the only real question is who specifically used the computer, which generally narrows the question down to two or three people.

This also completely ignores the ease with which a person can be harassed just by knowing their IP address.

If you can't see why people might be concerned about posting their IP address publicly in light of these things, then I don't know what to say other than you seem a bit naive.

[endolith]

This also completely ignores the ease with which a person can be harassed just by knowing their IP address.

Such as attacking their computer directly, finding anything else they've published under the same public IP, such as other blog comments or Wikipedia edits. Especially if it's a static IP. Knowing my company's IP, for instance, I know which Wikipedia edits were made by my coworkers.

[bigjeff5]

Especially if it's a static IP. Knowing my company's IP, for instance, I know which Wikipedia edits were made by my coworkers.

Even if it isn't a permanent IP, most ISP's don't change a customer's IP address regularly. A person often has the same temporary IP address for months at a time.