The dark side of Guardian comments | Hacker News Reader

The dark side of Guardian comments

theguardian.com

49 pointsmhw15 comments

Amusing to me that there is no comment section on this piece.

Elsewhere on the Guardian there was an article [0] talking about the issue (with comments open), and a lot the comments were along the lines of 'maybe if you stopped deleting any disagreement'

[0]http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/31/comments-audien...

Curious if how abussive commenters would respond if they weren't blocked, but comments were hidden so only mods & them can see them. Basically, auto-consume as much of the abussive commenter's time as possible; have there pages load slowly, have comments be buggy, give them CAPTCHAs, have auto response comments viewable to only them requesting they be civil/nice, etc.

That's usually called a shadow ban. As a recipient of several across various platforms: it is obvious when it happens. You notice the lack of replies to comments. You notice the lack of downvotes. Then you just move to a different account, another IP, or another exit node.

Sounds like the answer is better shadow banning - random voting, bot-generated fake replies only abuser can see, etc...

What works then?

if people would stop being offended by everyone always it would be a great start. I doubt that there is a technical solution other than disabling comments though.

I do wonder what options for 'nudging' people away from these comments there are.

For example, warning people their comment looks abusive, and pointing out what a large fraction of people comment appropriately.

If a comment looks uncivil, you could show the author how generic and meaningless prejudice comments often are, giving other examples of prejudice comments that have been deleted.

The Guardian could really do with a downvote button or similar. It seems one of the easiest ways to deal with iffy comments. Not sure why they don't have one.

I think there are disadvantages to a downvote button in some cases, the current setup allows for every comment to be seen as an equal (as long as it passes the community guidelines), which can be valuable when discussing particularly contentious issues. I guess it's always a choice as to what community you are looking to foster.

(Disclaimer: I'm a dev at the Guardian, but not in an area related to commenting)

Guess there are pros and cons and it's a bit of a personal preference. I was thinking that the Hacker News comments system works pretty well. Maybe they could clone that?

The Fashion section attracted at least twice the proportion of blocked comments as any other section. Not exactly a section I'd associate with (presumably sexist and racist) straight white men.

  Articles about feminism attracted very high levels of blocked comments

This has me curious whether it is the subject matter (rather than the sexual/racial identity) of female and minority authors that plays the largest role in the negative comments.

I suspect it likely is the subject matter. An article about something fairly non controversial (like say, a popular game or film announcement) is by definition going to get less personal attacks and troll comments than something about a heated political/religious matter or anything involving 'social justice' related issues (from any side).

If more of the female writers write the latter type of article rather than the form, this could lead to the stats shown.

Their data leads me to conclude no. They say: "Articles written by women got more blocked (ie abusive or disruptive) comments across almost all sections. But the more male-dominated the section, the more blocked comments the women who wrote there got (look at Sport and Technology). Fashion, where most articles were written by women, was one of the few sections where male authors consistently received more blocked comments."

Article and content aside, this is a really well thought out page design and the visual aids they use are fantastic.

Related current story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11478835

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