Let's Talk About Commenting
We twittered about this a few days ago, but we’d like to open it up for discussion: What can we do to improve the overall the quality of comments on the blog, to encourage lurkers to get involved without alienating some of the more active and, um, spirited commenters? We hear quite often from regular…
We twittered about this a few days ago, but we’d like to open it up for discussion: What can we do to improve the overall the quality of comments on the blog, to encourage lurkers to get involved without alienating some of the more active and, um, spirited commenters? We hear quite often from regular readers who feel uncomfortable, even intimidated, with the prospect of commenting. This isn’t surprising given the verbal beat-down one new commenter received from a gang of regulars a couple of weeks ago. Nor is the level of discussion going on in today’s Open Thread really where we’d like it to be. Short of active comment moderation, which really isn’t a practical option, what do you think we can/should do to elevate the quality of discussion and make newcomers feel more welcome? We’d be particularly interested to hear from some folks who usually hang back on the sidelines. It’s in the best interests of the blog and everyone who reads it to have as many people contributing their knowledge and opinions as possible.
Thanks,
Mr. B
Seems like a rating system would turn it into more of a closed circle of commenters. Isn’t Mr brownstoner’s aim idea to encourage more comments from people who may post less frequently, and so may not have chance to build up much of a ‘rating’?
I haven’t read through the comments, but I just read in this month’s Wired Mag about this topic. One solution I liked was that readers rate the commenters, and the readers can adjust a setting to show only commenters with a rating about “x”. This way if you don’t like reading the negative ones, they get filtered. Here’s a link
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-04/st_thompson
“i’ll just say it: is absolutely beyond the realm of possibility that Mr. B is the What?”
I’ve always assumed that daveinbedstuy is the What and SnarkSlope is Mr. B.
OK…xander…I can understand that. I don’t bother with any other blogs so I haven’t seen it in actual operation.
I’m basically a lurker, I suppose. I’ve only posted 3 or so times (I think) on this blog — though I read (and skim) it and the comments fairly regularly (I’ve never looked at the OT) — because what really interests me about it is the information I can get from it, not the debate or discussion among people. So I only post when I have what strikes me as relevant information about a topic, as opposed to a point of view (meaning I give what I like to get from others — though I suppose the line between information and a point of view might be hard to draw precisely). I’m not “not posting” out of fear of a smack-down, for what it’s worth.
For many reasons, I tend to find the internet most useful as a means of increasing the information I have on subjects that interest me, information that might eventually inform debates I have with myself or people I know. I’m less interested in it as place where people actually have online debates.
So I guess the question back to you, browstoner, is what precisely you hope to have in a comments section: is your concern with what’s substantively going on in the comments(do you want less debate and more simple exchange of information) or is your concern with amount of participation (you just want more people participating in the debates), or is your concern with the tone of the debates, regardless of how many people participate? Your concern could be any of these things, based on your post — I think. And the best response might be different, depending on what precisely you’re hoping to see in the comments . . .
Now, having offered what’s clearly a point of view (and not iformation), back to relative silence.
Underhill…where do any of us spew crap except the OT?? What do you think the mandated purpose of the OT should be???
dave, you miss the point.
it’s not what a single person thinks, it’s what the community decides.
a couple more points:
1. you do not have to rate just like you do not have to read or post
2. it’s up to brownstoner and his software to choose what to do with the metric that is created, not us.
3. Ratings happen all the time in the real world. It’s similar to word of mouth, but the real point is to allow the community to create a consensus about how *we* want it to behave.
You have no reason to believe me, or even think I know what I’m taking about here, but if you did research on this topic you’d see that this actually increase the structure of a community.
4. it’s not about you, or me or anyone else’s singular opinion.
If there was an ignore button it would solve most peoples problems. I could immediately ignore Dave, Rob, and Bay Ridge and anyone else I didn’t want to read. They could post as much mindless crap as they want, but I wouldn’t have to scroll through it and people would have one less reason to complain. It would almost be like they didn’t exist!
Then you could see the number of people who also don’t want to read their crap, which seems like a lot of people from this thread. In reality, I don’t think you are going to doing anything but lets hope after this discussion they get the hint.
I’m back!!! I**** The What tosses out bags of Skittles***. Now some of the dumbasses want people to “moderate” the posters here????!!! LMMFAO!!! Please tell me what criteria that would fall under??? Like Whuh said you are a bunch of intellectual cowards!!!
The Brooklynian Blog post Covert Race and Class crap and as soon someone is against it, Bam they get banned!! I one I don’t see here is when Brownstoner post something that is inflammatory no one get upset but when The What takes issue with it all the retards get upset. Hypocrisy at it’s best!
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…