Oops! An embarrassing typo; third one this year.:o
This. Unless they’re at least lightly moderated, the now-universal “comments” tail is nothing but open-mike night for the loud, stupid and obnoxious.
I haven’t found it worth sifting through for intelligent or worthwhile comments for years. I really wish news sites would move back away from the bloggity-blog model and differentiate between opinion pieces - which warrant comments - and news, which does not.
Well, to get one’s ideas out there for others to consider seems like a worthwhile endeavor, no? If we follow your logic then we could always throw our hands up and say, “What will it matter a million years from now?”:rolleyes:
So you prefer someone to cherry-pick for you comments they think you should find of value, 'eh? Well, in the words of Larry King, I guess that’s what makes horse racing.:rolleyes:
But is it not a good thing to hear-out what a “ranting racist uncle” has to say if there’s a chance that one can get him to let some steam off, settle down, and then try and speak some reason to him?
I personally feel that there’s a lot of ticking time-bombs walking around on account of some folks feeling frustrated because they don’t believe their points of view are being heard the way so many others are.
If you want to get people to take your ideas seriously you don’t use the comments section of the DM website. You might as well use notes written on public toilet stall walls.
No one cares about comment sections of news websites for good reason; they are sad, pathetic places frequented by trolls, idiots, and malcontents. And that goes double for the Daily Mail. The only sites that have even a modicum of respectability are ones that have heavy moderation.
We agree to disagree.
That’s fine. I really don’t think this is worth getting worked up over, but if you disagree that’s OK too.
This is how I feel. Just because you don’t want to read/hear racist uncle’s point of view doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. At least in a comments section you have the option to be the bigger person and speak rationally to them, or at least realize what sort of viewpoints are out there for better or worse. It doesn’t hurt to be informed, information is power.
I think comments sections are a wonderful thing. Before the Internet news via newspapers and television was a largely passive thing outside your immediate friends and family. You could write a letter and wait weeks or months to see if they published it. But it was very slow and non-interactive.
Now you can post opinions and information about content from all over the world. In fact I often learn just as much from the comments on a site like Wired.com as I do from the actual article. Of course human nature often pops up and you get trolls and other unpleasantness, but you gotta take the good with the bad.
Really upvote/downvote systems like Reddit.com work fairly well to upvote good content and mostly hide highly objectionable content, although everything does tend tend to get watered down to a certain Reddit “hivemind” set of likes and dislikes that becomes apparent after a while. Well the same could be said for SDMB. 
I love the DM, and the comment section even more. The comments do give a good insite as to what the readers think.
I have never had a comment “moderated”, but occasionally it isn’t published and they send me nasty e-mail. but overall, I’m a bit surprised at what they do allow.
I usually post what I think, but depending on my mood, I can be a shit disturber.
As for DM being right-wing, well I never gave that much thought. It’s simply entertainment for me.
cite?
The whole world, huh?
The Daily Mail is the Watneys Red Barrel of journalism.
The comments section of almost every news site is an echo chamber of assholes.
What on earth are you talking about?
Did someone mention the Daily Mail and Nazis?
I shudder to think what research you’ve done to state the above. Presumably none? :smack:
Here’s a list of the national newspapers in England with websites (all of them substantial; none of them taking a lead from the Daily Mail.)
You’re confusing them with Reddit.