The place on the web where comments don't suck

Soundcloud comments seem more like Twitter-style one-liners than an actual discussion with replies etc. I actually find some of the youtube comments amusing; for example, the comments following the Russian dash cam videos and other such weird-but-true slices of life.

Internet communities are a work in progress. Reader comment/talkback/forum plugins are considered a necessity, and yet much of their content is pointless and trivial.

Hacker News does a pretty good job, for some reason, maybe mostly because of the ferocious moderation of anyone who strays from factual and reasonable sorts of statements into ad hominem or pointless sorts of space wasting.

But most sites are terrible. I guess the only solution is heavy moderation and a core of reasonable folks.

I would pay for a a news / discussion service that let me go to the post office and show my driver’s license before I could join. (the payment could also be used to pay for writers and content creation)

That way the people who want to hide behind anonymous accounts can keep doing what they’re best at and I can enjoy discussion and news in a community that understands responsibility.

It might slowly educate people and whilst it’s a shame to have to pay for a respecting community, the systems required to maintain it and the content it would provide are not free.

I quite like having my real name as my account name. Maybe I’ll look back and regret what I’ve said, but I’d like to think I won’t.

Why is it so difficult to build a community on the web where people stay reasonable in their comment ?