Daily Dot Latest To 'Keep Conversation Moving Forward' By Not Letting Site Visitors Comment At All
from the muted dept
There's a raging trend afoot for websites to shutter their news comment sections, then insisting that they're doing this because they care so much about conversation on the Internet. A steady parade of websites have now stopped letting site visitors give public feedback, almost-proudly informing these muted site communities that this was done for the greater good of mankind. Really, companies just don't want to spend the time or money to weed the troll garden (or may not like having their writers publicly fact checked on site), and are shoving these communities toward social media to bury the "problem" permanently.The name of the game is about being cheap and lazy without looking like you're being cheap and lazy, and the justifications being flung about by editorial staffs are equal part absurd and fascinating. Popular Science, for example, declared that on site discussion of news articles is "bad for science." The Verge recently decided to shutter news story comments to help "build relationships." Bloomberg recently killed news comments and insisted it wasn't a big deal because, hey, most people can't be bothered to comment and therefore news comments "don't represent our readership."
Few of these sites seem particularly concerned about the fact that shuttering comments makes it very clear they don't really value truly local community, and lack the willpower to nurture and protect on-site (or in app) participation. Nor do they seem to realize that data has shown that toxic comment sections can often be dramatically improved simply by engaging a little with readers.
The Daily Dot is the latest to put comments "on infinite hiatus," the site proclaiming it's basically giving up after a few of the bigger troll flare ups of the last few years:
This trend is about more than just raw engagement. It’s also about what kind of engagement we want to have. We’re at an interesting point in the history of the Web. In the wake of Gamergate, Celebgate, and the Reddit Meltdown of 2015, both publishers and social networks are grappling with the same fundamental issue: how to foster engagement and dialogue without inadvertently feeding the trolls in the process.The solution: don't let anybody say anything publicly on your actual website. Ingenious! The site continues:
"The general consensus is that we need to detoxify the Web—to make it a cleaner, nicer, safer, and more inclusive place to live and work. Of course, at the Daily Dot, we would like to see a more civil, compassionate Web, but we want to be careful that in the name of fostering civility, we do not inadvertently kill all dissention.The notion that you can somehow bring managed civility to the entire Internet seems like a fool's errand. You can bring civility to your own comment section, but again that takes time, money and effort that it's abundantly clear many websites aren't willing to provide. So instead we get esoteric, disingenuous, incoherent musings on how being too lazy to engage with your own readership will somehow save the broader Internet from the menacing troll hordes. Like other sites, The Daily Dot proclaims that "hey, we're still on social media" before dropping the now all-too-common line about how this is all about improving the conversation:
It’s a different route toward the same goal: to deliver the news to our readers, wherever they may live online, and to keep the conversation moving forward.It's like putting duct tape on the mouths of everybody in town because of two jackasses at the pub, then proudly patting yourself on the back for spearheading an amazing revolution in kindness and communication. Obviously sites are free to insult and ignore on-site communities as they see fit, but it would be a notable improvement if they could do it without the nauseating hyperbolic claims that they're just trying to save the Internet from itself.
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Filed Under: anonymity, comments, conversation, websites
Companies: daily dot
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Response to: observer on Aug 3rd, 2015 @ 12:46pm
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All hecklers dream of ensuring that only their point of view is heard. Newspapers are little different, and can achieve the dream, at least on their own site
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Morans.
While ignoring all the other sites out here where people lambaste you for your arrogant belief that you've managed to quell the toxic discussion of your silly site policies and actions. Github, DailyDot, Verge, ...
Do they seriously believe this is doing anything about trollish comments, or is this just to save money or something? I think it's pretty obviously the latter.
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Re:
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Likely self-defense
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Well, maybe they can...
Ah... another trip back to the "good old days".
When will these folks learn that the world has moved on and "mass-comm" is now a two-way dialogue?
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Any discussion is better than none
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Re: Any discussion is better than none
You can write random crap as your info and once you're logged in, it cannot follow you around sites using discuss if you use the extension auto-destructing cookies, I have to relog on disqus...but really I only use it for one site, AVclub, to speak about tv series because movies are totally shit compared to how unreal great tv series can be these days (which is a complete reversal). And if people being aware of the MAFIAA being a small percentage of it (they can create dumber, made with more graphics and less dialogue!). Not really a fan of more than 4 tv shows in the last 10 years though, its just that the good ones, are eclipsing everything away.
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NAHNAHNAH! I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER HOW AWESOME I AM!
NAHNAHNAH!
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A Sense of Strategy
Yes, but you seem to be taking this from the attitude that every Web site should have comments.
Having a participatory community needs to be a strategic decision. It requires investment, and therefore it needs to make sense to make that investment.
The problem is that too many sites added comments because "it's what all the cool kids are doing", without any strategic sense for why they have the comments. It was a checkbox on the VC funding form, for example.
So, for many of these sites, I would argue that their decision is simply a reversion to what they should have done from the outset, given their organizational priorities. And, in many cases, it will be better that they do drop the comments, as if they are not going to make the necessary investments in engagement, those comments can easily turn into a cesspool, which reflects poorly on the organization. IOW, do it right or don't do it at all.
The highfalutin' PR fodder for why they are taking down the comments is tripe, but PR fodder is generally tripe. It may be worthy of ridicule, but it is hardly newsworthy.
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Re: A Sense of Strategy
I disagree, I think the criticism here is aimed squarely at the lame and disingenuous claims of improving the community by killing comments. I don't see anything above saying websites must have commenting.
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Re: A Sense of Strategy
This one sentence summarizes much of what is wrong with having so much of the web commercialized.
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Live by the trolls, die by the trolls
It's a similar situation with Reddit, they ran a money-making site on the backs of volunteers, and then the entire web lost the plot when the volunteers mutinied, since there was this general feeling of lost control over the web (like it was their's to begin with). Yes, they're trolls, but if they let you pay the bills, you're stuck with them.
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and believe!
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The Intercept's moderation, however, would seem to be done entirely by the DISCERN project's schizophrenic neural network.
(http://news.utexas.edu/2011/05/05/schizophrenia_discern)
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Re: Same stuff, different day
( I come here just because I do NOT have to log in for comments, It's like a rain of sunshine after a week of rain clouds ) :) ( and I always use the same name )
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That is the biggest cause of my banning.
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Or a double captcha. Noone bothers to solve that shit twice, noone commets.
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Popular Science Link Effectively Dead
For those who do still want to read what Popular Science had to say, archive.org's Wayback Machine has an archived copy at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150718155339/http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were -shutting-our-comments
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Oh God, I give up. Just stop the world I wanna get off.
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But what do you expect from a growing number of online news outlets that can;t stand hearing people criticize them for their political soapboxing?
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Although TBH comment sections on news sites are mostly deserted outside of news on politics and/or sex scandals. And that's when the trolls come out of the woodwork.
Also, paper newspapers didn't allow you to comment on articles so why should online newspapers. Let's not forget that corps just want "the same thing, but on a computer".
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Stay anonymous and don't feed the trolls.
The media has been people it's "cowardly" to be anonymous on the internet. Which is like saying it is cowardly to lock your door. Simultaneously, the media has been feeding the trolls, constantly with attention. Teaching people that dancing to the trolls tune is what you ought to do.
This has led to an entire generation of people who expose themselves to more trolling and then spur the trolls onward.
This situation has two solutions, de-anonymize the internet and then spend untold billions on moderation apparatus that will probably fail to shift through the exabytes(billion gigabytes) of data now produced monthly on the internet, to find the bad behaviour in it.
Or go back to keeping your personal details safe, only releasing them to Facebook or the like. Though you probably shouldn't do that either.
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So they pulled a Sarkeesian on us... hahaha ROFL
I mean... dedicating an entire section (read temper tantrum) to what they -and only they- called 'The Reddit Meltdown' O.O
Feminazi after feminazi propaganda and disinformation campaigns...
And now the final touch: stick the head in the sand "lalalala can't hear nofin!!" hahahahaha this is too adorable!!
So long Daily dot, as a long time visitor to your site (circa 2012 onwards), it is with not little sadness I say 'Fare well' I'll always remember when you used to be an interesting/fun forum to hang around with.
Not any more I'm afraid.
*goes to DailyDot bookmark's favicon* > Right click > delete
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No Comment
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Possible Response
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