Comments now cost 99 cents and your name.
networkworld.com
networkworld.com
But what sort of person is willing to pay to make comments on a local newspaper? My prediction: the comments section of the Attleboro Sun-Chronicle will henceforth be limited to a very small number of retired cranks with too much time on their hands and very large bees in their bonnet about something or other. Expect to see the same damn thread under every article as the four usual suspects duke it out over whether the problems of the world are all due to (a) George Bush, (b) Barack Obama, (c) the Federal Reserve or (d) the aliens.
I think this topic is similar to the post about a newspaper charging for comments.
Publishing is in crisis. I know many web types don't really worry too much about these inky-fingered paper dinosaurs, but it worries me. For whatever reasons, the web gurus of the late 90s told everyone to win eyeballs, and now we have free content, free comments and free submissions. Not even the price of postage is a barrier any more. We seem to be suffering now from an internet that is burdened by too many contributors, too much information, too much noise and not enough signal. And what the publishers will tell you, too few readers.
So perhaps a paywall will help to balance this out. In the past submitting a letter or an article or a book to a publisher was the "entry barrier" to participation. Now it is easier to do via a website or email and the price disguised within the ISP fee.
And if publishers do not charge for submission, how else do we reduce the overwhelming deluge of poor quality submissions?
I'm amazed that a company that wants to be taken as a professional source for journalism allows those kinds of comments on their site. It just looks terrible to their image and adds nothing to the story.
Comments are from "ordinary people", so why would anyone measure the quality of an article by the quality of the comments? Does an article become less true or less readable just because it is followed by some bad comments?
In contrast, not publishing comments would lead to the impression of being unable to take criticism.
By publishing even the dumbest comments, they show that they are able to handle criticism, and that they don't suppress anyone's opinion.
> and adds nothing to the story
Comments serve a completely different purpose. While the article reflects the facts, the comments reflect the sentiment of the people. That's what they add to the story.
In some rare cases comments even add some interesting facts.
Except they don't reflect the sentiment of "the people", only the small subset with the time and inclination to comment. This usually winds up being folks with some kind of extreme opinion or other kind of bonnet-dwelling bee.
I see what you're saying, but remember than many people judge a news organisation by the calibre of its viewers and readers.
The majority of the anonymous-posting news sites I have visited have been filled with trollish, often misspelled comments (on a side note: I think there must be a direct relationship between how poor a speller one is and their political leanings..). The NYTimes is the only major news source where I have found the majority of the online comments to have been written in a legible manner.
If HN grows too big or unruly to manage, I fully expect pg to implement credit card registration as well...
I've said it before and I'll say it again: what I really want is a browser plugin which blocks comments. I never want to see another comment again, on any site. That'd be a pretty sweet internet.
He said didn't want to read comments. That doesn't mean he won't make comments...
The hard part is crafting a policy such that there is a clear way of dealing with earnest cranks (or people willing to be seen as earnest cranks.)
But even if you don't solve that problem, you can get rid of the obvious trolls by implementing some 'one identity per human' plus banning. Heck, if you raise the price of identities enough, you could make bans meaningful without limiting each person to only one identity (though, I suspect, in that case you have to charge more than a buck.)
Unless you are just trolling.
But of the forums meant for serious discussion, there is far less trolling than anywhere else on the internet. Not that many people are willing to pay $10 per troll comment- though they ban people very regularly.
otherwise, hope you got :tenbux:
Worth mentioning: not everyone has a credit card. A requirement that you have to own a credit card will, in effect if not in design, essentially redline your service. Reasonable people can disagree about how much that matters, but I would predict that many newsrooms would go nuclear if you connected the dots for them on the inability of, e.g., 60% of blacks in Chicago from being barred from civic participation on $PICK_AN_ISSUE because they don't have a bank account. (There are prepaid cards to circumvent that restriction. Of course, the riffraff who are the intended targets of the policy are also capable of buying prepaid cards.)
Work out a solution to verify the name. Allow anybody to sign up for 99 cent.
Now allow trusted sites (newspapers, Amazon.com etc.) where the feedback is important access to your authentication.
Let people use alias with the caveat that if there's enough "bad behavior" report / warning, their true name will be revealed.
This would make the startup the Equifax or BBB of the public forums. "Public credibility FICO score" and similar services would be next.
It's good for consumers too, soon the 99 c will add up.
When true anonymous comment is required, just send it to a journalist, they will make sure the person's identity is protected.
if this is true for everyone, that means that the person who decided to implement the system to "check your name" is in for a big surprise when they realize any name will work with a valid credit card.
someone please correct me if i'm wrong...
AVS checks zip code and/or the number portion of your street address depending on how you interpret the response.
CVV2 check obviously works as intended. And our experience has been that when CVV2 is checked, sometimes the expiration date will be checked (although w/o CVV2 check expiration date is similarly meaningless).
I'm far from an expert here, so somebody else can probably clarify a bit more.
An idea: what about using Hashcash instead?
I think the internet is loosing its way. This site has no pay wall, yet the quality of discussion is great. Maybe it is not anonymity but the general atmosphere which encourages trolling.
No. Free speech is guaranteed, but that does't mean a company has to support and promote your speech on its private platform.
Considering that commenting on stories is only a recent addition. Might be surprised to find out that it was kind of difficult to comment on stories to the public when it was an actual newsPAPER. =)
You still have letters to the editor. You still have options to create a blog and post your thoughts.
> This site has no pay wall, yet the quality of discussion is great.
Yet it can still get pretty heated at times, and the moderation is pretty heavy. Also, the audience it attracts is a certain mindset. Invite the same audience a newspaper gets and it will suddenly get less civil.