Online comments are broken. What alternatives exist?
2 comments
I am wondering if comments should be broken into two categories: 1. only show comments from people who live in my area/region. 2. only show comments from the higher rated commentators.
The reason for the geographic region is to promote communication and ideas in a more localized meaning.
As to higher rated commentators, why not a rating system for commentators? Amazon does this, to some success.
The reason for the geographic region is to promote communication and ideas in a more localized meaning.
As to higher rated commentators, why not a rating system for commentators? Amazon does this, to some success.
I've always thought that last was a good idea. It'd be easy enough to implement on fb I think.
The primary problem I see now is that news articles are collapsing under the weight of their own commentariat. A few minutes ago, for example, I was reading an article at The Hill, a popular political reporting website. I was about to comment but decided it would be a waste of time given the already high volume of comments. Having the day off, I went to take a shower instead. 15 minutes later there were an additional 750 comments.
Please note that I'm not addressing the content or sentiment of newspaper comments (poor as the former or disagreeable as the latter may be to any given reader). The sheer volume makes meaningful discussion impossible, and without meaningful discussion social spaces become little more than vessels of mob containment. Does anyone have ideas for how to address this?
* Please avoid falling into standard 'liberal vs conservative' mudslinging, I've avoided discussing specific content because this strikes me as a general problem rather than one limited to people of a particular political orientation.