Back in October, Greg Mankiw cancelled comments at his blog: Unfortunately, a few (usually anonymous) commenters too often crossed the line. I just don’t have the time to police comments and enforce good behavior, especially since some posts were generating more than 100 comments. And I don’t want to host a party in which a small vitriolic minority consistently tries to ruin the event for everyone else. So I decided to turn the comments feature off.
LV outlet are several businesses making many items and many of them are very enthusiastic about obtaining the top quality ones with the passage of time. It’s all-natural that the top quality goods like the gucci sneakers, sun shades or totes are very costly where the regular man will certainly find it hard to continue the buying with the passage of time.
'Elite tags' don't make the 'mafia effect' better, and certainly give the appearance of making it worse.
Low quality posts get ignored. Consistently low quality posters get ignored consistently. I think it is better (for everyone, really) to slog through content the hard way to determine high quality posts than rely on a sign system which declares 'THIS IS A HIGH QUALITY POST.'
Slashdot's comment rating system is awesome. YouTube's comment section would be about ten times as useful if their new comment rating system would let you screen out comments at level 1, 2, 3, or 5 like Slashdot.
You guys should consider using Disqus on your blog ( http://www.disqus.com ). It allows you to set up a voting system that will automatically promote the good content to the top and filter out the junk.
Feel free to offer explicit definitions of signal and noise - ones that don't allow you to shove positions you don't agree with into the category of 'noise'.
Given the breathtaking hubris and shoddy argumentation present here on a regular basis, statements like rukidding's are desperately needed. If nothing else, they permit a demonstration that contrary positions aren't run off the blog.
So, rukidding, you've either intentionally or unintentionally provided a great example of why limits on comments could be useful. Anything that increases the signal-to-noise ratio in the discussion is worth considering.
OT, but there hasn't yet been an open thread for this month, so I thought I'd mention this here:
Robin_Hanson's idea for the bet about the repeated study on women vs. men talkativeness expired yesterday and it looks like the results confirmed the previous study. Comment?
I can't seem to link directly to the contract, as there's some javascript predicate, but if you click soon you'll get it here
Brad DeLong, the fat Marxist blogger, censors all comments that fail to endorse left-wing political/economic stances. It's scary that he stifles debate that might threaten his political biases.
In the spirit of the Edge.org project the Xeni quote was pulled from, I'd be curious to learn from Robin, EY, or another poster here if a comment has ever lead to a change of mind about what was posted?
Is the model operating here really confrontational? I often see Robin critique EY's posts, but don't recall seeing too many resolutions in these cases (or even sufficient clarification on the premise to make rational disagreement impossible).
I've never witnessed any major problems with comments on this blog, so I think a slashdotesque ranking system would be entirely too rococo for OB. Also, I like having all the comments on one page, so that you can ctrl+f certain terms or names easily.
Besides, sometimes even the most boneheaded posts can provoke you to think, even if not in the direction intended by the author.
It's amazing how many people only believe in democracy and freedom of speech as long as they're in the majority and are hearing what they want to hear.
I have trouble understanding why people start crying because other posters are "insensitive." It always means "disagrees with me."
Why do so many of you supposed intellects so greatly fear diversity of opinion? Why are you so sensitive to being disagreed with? And even in the case of truly mindless babble (at least as likely to be left-wing as right-wing), why the difficulty in just ignoring it?
Comments are often more interesting that the posts. And they also serve the important function of showing how the posts are received. Even when I disagree with a commment, I'm still interested in learning about the mentality of those I disagree with.
Then again, I'm not a sniveling little twit academic, terrified of the real world and harsh lighting, desperate to believe that "We're right!" and "They're wrong!"
And your reaction to that last sentence is exactly my point. People who don't like the comments section and fear diversity of opinion are like country-club whites talking about "those" people.
Maybe do something similar to the whole "list sniper"+open moderation thing of SL4, since it seems to kinda work?
What I mean is, appoint some "blog snipers" that are given authority to moderate, delete comments, etc, but all such actions must be open and public? ie, make meta mosts along the lines of "moderator so and so has removed all of such-and-such's comments from posting something-or-other because they were doing-something-that-they-were-doing", but with the openness enforced by the software?
That is, have what ammounts to a (publically viewable) log of all actions taken by the moderators, generated and updated automatically, such that it also allows one to view the "state of the site prior to the action", analogous to being able to view the entire history of an entry on wikipedia.
The official moderators perhaps should be mainly people other than the main posters of the blog, to help at least reduce any potential biases there.
(note, to clarify, the publicising of the moderation actions ought to be both automated and manual. What I mean is there will be the publically viewable log/history system, plus also moderators should, after taking moderating actions, make some posting to describe what they did and why, with perhaps including links to the relevant parts of the moderation log)
Seems to me many of these are attempts to solve what is essentially a human problem systemically/technologically, when such solutions are doomed to failure because they don't actually solve the problem: like using flesh-colored paint to cover a wound, the color may change but the wound is still there. (I personally believe this occurs because many bloggers are technologically savvy, while at the same time often not as people/social savvy, and so their solutions to problems are based around technology while missing the human dynamics creating the problem in the first place.)
I am a member of successful game/design-related community where the topic of moderation was recently discussed in an interview with the site maintainers/moderators, and a number of points pertinent to this discussion were made about the way people view and deal with the internet and others on the internet.
A quick summary would be: most people are looking for emotional satisfaction -- whether that be from safely getting away with uncouth behaviors, feeling like a part of a group, or gaining and maintaining a perception of status -- in on-line discussions, leading to posturing, pointless arguing, and so forth. Combating this behavior requires developing and maintaining a community around standards accepted by the community, and then maintained/socially reinforced by the community, recognizing the difference between pointless discourse (as well as polite-but-pointless) and functional discourse, and not providing a community the environment in which emotional satisfaction-based posting would thrive.
If you listen to the interview, keep in mind there are obviously game and design related issues discussed, but a decent chunk of the hour is about moderation and human behavior/interaction on the internet. The relevant discussion starts about 5 to 6 minutes in.
This comment inspired the creation of a subreddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/lea...
LV outlet are several businesses making many items and many of them are very enthusiastic about obtaining the top quality ones with the passage of time. It’s all-natural that the top quality goods like the gucci sneakers, sun shades or totes are very costly where the regular man will certainly find it hard to continue the buying with the passage of time.
'Elite tags' don't make the 'mafia effect' better, and certainly give the appearance of making it worse.
Low quality posts get ignored. Consistently low quality posters get ignored consistently. I think it is better (for everyone, really) to slog through content the hard way to determine high quality posts than rely on a sign system which declares 'THIS IS A HIGH QUALITY POST.'
Slashdot's comment rating system is awesome. YouTube's comment section would be about ten times as useful if their new comment rating system would let you screen out comments at level 1, 2, 3, or 5 like Slashdot.
You guys should consider using Disqus on your blog ( http://www.disqus.com ). It allows you to set up a voting system that will automatically promote the good content to the top and filter out the junk.
Feel free to offer explicit definitions of signal and noise - ones that don't allow you to shove positions you don't agree with into the category of 'noise'.
Given the breathtaking hubris and shoddy argumentation present here on a regular basis, statements like rukidding's are desperately needed. If nothing else, they permit a demonstration that contrary positions aren't run off the blog.
So, rukidding, you've either intentionally or unintentionally provided a great example of why limits on comments could be useful. Anything that increases the signal-to-noise ratio in the discussion is worth considering.
OT, but there hasn't yet been an open thread for this month, so I thought I'd mention this here:
Robin_Hanson's idea for the bet about the repeated study on women vs. men talkativeness expired yesterday and it looks like the results confirmed the previous study. Comment?
I can't seem to link directly to the contract, as there's some javascript predicate, but if you click soon you'll get it here
Brad DeLong, the fat Marxist blogger, censors all comments that fail to endorse left-wing political/economic stances. It's scary that he stifles debate that might threaten his political biases.
In the spirit of the Edge.org project the Xeni quote was pulled from, I'd be curious to learn from Robin, EY, or another poster here if a comment has ever lead to a change of mind about what was posted?
Is the model operating here really confrontational? I often see Robin critique EY's posts, but don't recall seeing too many resolutions in these cases (or even sufficient clarification on the premise to make rational disagreement impossible).
I agree with some of the points made by Raven.
Most academic blogs are mild compared to the hardcore flaming that goes on at various forums - but people survive.
I also agree with Leif; boneheaded posts often make you think deeply about a problem.
I don't think the problem is really worth worrying about. But I could be wrong.
Boneheaded comments, too.
I've never witnessed any major problems with comments on this blog, so I think a slashdotesque ranking system would be entirely too rococo for OB. Also, I like having all the comments on one page, so that you can ctrl+f certain terms or names easily.
Besides, sometimes even the most boneheaded posts can provoke you to think, even if not in the direction intended by the author.
It's amazing how many people only believe in democracy and freedom of speech as long as they're in the majority and are hearing what they want to hear.
I have trouble understanding why people start crying because other posters are "insensitive." It always means "disagrees with me."
Why do so many of you supposed intellects so greatly fear diversity of opinion? Why are you so sensitive to being disagreed with? And even in the case of truly mindless babble (at least as likely to be left-wing as right-wing), why the difficulty in just ignoring it?
Comments are often more interesting that the posts. And they also serve the important function of showing how the posts are received. Even when I disagree with a commment, I'm still interested in learning about the mentality of those I disagree with.
Then again, I'm not a sniveling little twit academic, terrified of the real world and harsh lighting, desperate to believe that "We're right!" and "They're wrong!"
And your reaction to that last sentence is exactly my point. People who don't like the comments section and fear diversity of opinion are like country-club whites talking about "those" people.
Maybe do something similar to the whole "list sniper"+open moderation thing of SL4, since it seems to kinda work?
What I mean is, appoint some "blog snipers" that are given authority to moderate, delete comments, etc, but all such actions must be open and public? ie, make meta mosts along the lines of "moderator so and so has removed all of such-and-such's comments from posting something-or-other because they were doing-something-that-they-were-doing", but with the openness enforced by the software?
That is, have what ammounts to a (publically viewable) log of all actions taken by the moderators, generated and updated automatically, such that it also allows one to view the "state of the site prior to the action", analogous to being able to view the entire history of an entry on wikipedia.
The official moderators perhaps should be mainly people other than the main posters of the blog, to help at least reduce any potential biases there.
(note, to clarify, the publicising of the moderation actions ought to be both automated and manual. What I mean is there will be the publically viewable log/history system, plus also moderators should, after taking moderating actions, make some posting to describe what they did and why, with perhaps including links to the relevant parts of the moderation log)
Seems to me many of these are attempts to solve what is essentially a human problem systemically/technologically, when such solutions are doomed to failure because they don't actually solve the problem: like using flesh-colored paint to cover a wound, the color may change but the wound is still there. (I personally believe this occurs because many bloggers are technologically savvy, while at the same time often not as people/social savvy, and so their solutions to problems are based around technology while missing the human dynamics creating the problem in the first place.)
I am a member of successful game/design-related community where the topic of moderation was recently discussed in an interview with the site maintainers/moderators, and a number of points pertinent to this discussion were made about the way people view and deal with the internet and others on the internet.
A quick summary would be: most people are looking for emotional satisfaction -- whether that be from safely getting away with uncouth behaviors, feeling like a part of a group, or gaining and maintaining a perception of status -- in on-line discussions, leading to posturing, pointless arguing, and so forth. Combating this behavior requires developing and maintaining a community around standards accepted by the community, and then maintained/socially reinforced by the community, recognizing the difference between pointless discourse (as well as polite-but-pointless) and functional discourse, and not providing a community the environment in which emotional satisfaction-based posting would thrive.
If you listen to the interview, keep in mind there are obviously game and design related issues discussed, but a decent chunk of the hour is about moderation and human behavior/interaction on the internet. The relevant discussion starts about 5 to 6 minutes in.