Well, legally there are complications involved with moderation. A website can be held liable for defamatory content posted by third parties if it actively moderates such content; if it functions as a simple messageboard it can’t.
Depending on the volume of comments, I find the first couple of dozen to the first hundred comments are worth reading. Then the trolls come out in force.
I find the discussion in the comments often adds depth to the article, so I prefer to have comments rather than not.
Comment moderation is outsourced to countries like India or the Philipines often enough.
*
“Some Fridays you feel like you need to spend two hours in the shower because it’s so disgusting,” says Bilous.*
Bloomberg — Comment Moderator
*Each New Delhi, San José, or Manila worker has a grid of around 10 photos which he or she quickly flicks through – 8 straight hours of explicit images of bestiality, beheadings, child pornography, and hate speech which website users have flagged as inappropriate. Immediately after the initial diagnosis, the images speed to an American corporate office, where a considerably-higher paid moderator double-checks to ensure that it meets the company’s standards.
*Ex-Patt — The Perils of Outsourcing Comment Moderation
However, it is fairly well-known one can buy comments — or posts for a forum such as this — by the carload to boost traffic. Some owners may seek provocative foulness to generate fake controversy.
[ And of course, corporate entities purchase favourable reviews not only through direct corruption, as Microsoft did with laptops for bloggers, but with another Microsoft ploy: Astroturfing — paying for nice comments. ]
It would be amusing if one division of a publisher was purchasing ripe comments in bulk, whilst another was paying unfortunates to moderate them to bits.
Interesting. Learn something new everyday. Thanks.
Beyond that, it seems like ANY article or topic will garner some sort of partisan response. I mean, things like feel-good pieces about teachers of the year or some such, will have dipshits oozing up out of the drain to babble about how it’s a Democratic conspiracy to give the Teacher of the Year award to a school in the ghetto. Or if it’s a white teacher at a predominantly white school, we’ll get treated to how that teacher has it easy because they don’t face the same challenges as the ghetto school’s teacher.
Probably 2/3 of the time, that partisanship comes with a thinly veiled stench of racism as well.
I’m all for the removal of comments sections. I don’t see an issue with having email addresses for the authors on there, but comments sections don’t usually serve any useful purpose beyond giving hateful and stupid assholes a forum for their views.
Don’t forget all those 2nd hand testimonials by people who have a friend with a relative who makes $6,000 a week on the internet.
They certainly do, but even with the moderation, many of the comment sections of Atlantic articles are not much better than sewage. A few of their writers don’t run comments on their pieces, James Fallows is one, I believe.
If it is a blog which is narrowcasted (such that only interested parties will partake, and not trolls and other lowlifes), then comment sections I’ve found can be very enlightening and engaging.
What did you come up with?
All of this. I stopped reading comments long ago (and was never interested in, say, YouTube or Yahoo) when I realized that even the most innocuous stories out there would devolve into non-sequitur partisan sniping and bigotry of whatever stripe. It’s the same reason here that my ignore function is well-worked… I have no use for anyone, conservative or liberal, who interjects that bullshit into places it doesn’t belong. I appreciate the head’s up that identifies them as morons, but beyond that, I ain’t got no time for such inanity.
So, if this is true, I applaud the general decision. I see it as a good thing for the basest in humanity to not always have an easily accessible voice and think their blatherings should be confined to dark places on the interwebs, lest they attract more like-minded idiots to rise up from their mama’s basements.
Many commenters also pointed out factual ``errors" and falsifications in articles. But factual correctness does not excuse Political Incorrectness.
Where can I find that information on difference between a comment section and a message board.
All of the people who posted here who owe me $25K should be ashamed of themselves.
With whom?
I’m guessing with someone not into bestiality or beheadings.
The Wikipedia page for §230 of the CDA is a good place to start. It’s not a difference between a comment section and a message board, though; it’s the difference between a moderated comment section or message board and an unmoderated one. Moderation (depending on its nature) can make “interactive computer services” liable as “information content providers.”
I would have said both but as that’s not an option…