News Mar 12, 2012 at 9:28 am

Comments

1
If we're gonna have to start blowing you, Steve, to be allowed to comment here...well, it better not be more than once a week, that's all I can say.
2
A) I definitely think theres should be a thumbs up/down functionality to comments.

B) I don't really see how a curated comment section would work - it would be really, really hard for that to stay interesting.

C) Beyond all that:commenters are almost universally stupid, and should be completely ignored by content providers, except to the extent the provider wishes to stir them up to drive more page views.
3
Denton sounds like such an idiot in that interview. The more Gawker Media has done to its commenting system, the more people have been driven away from Gawker. And basically saying that his readers are too stupid to be allowed to talk isn't particularly good PR, especially when you're not the only game in town.

I actually think that Reddit's upvote/downvote system works quite well to promote both clever and thoughtful comments. But whatever, Gawker has my downvote under AJ Daulerio either way.
4
Whatever, like Nick Denton is one to talk. The comment sections of gawker & his other sites (esp. Jezebel, where I used to like to hang, but just can't anymore) are a fucking mess of haphazard comment deletion by butt-hurt writers, and approval of any boring ass-kissing commenter. And pre-selecting commenters for certain stories isn't going to make the comments as a whole better - it will discourage new people from commenting, anger the non-special existing commenters, and create a conflict for the special commenters who could risk losing their fancy status by being a dick, which truly is the heart and soul of an internet commenter.

@self: tl;dr get a life.
5
I don't visit sites that restrict commenting any more than they have to in order to discourage blatantly combative or threatening behavior. What would the point be?

Also, after much work in the field, I find Internet Troll Studies to be an entirely useful skill to bring over into real life. There's a lot you can learn from what people will say completely anonymously.
6
I just want a "subscribe" feature! Notify me when someone replies to a thread that I've decided to watch. There are stories in the archives that go back years, right? If some of those conversations want to stay alive, let 'em! Otherwise, those articles are just moldering in the stacks...
7
About the circumstances of Caldwell's death: http://www.oregonlive.com/tigard/index.ssf…

Wow. Considering the Oregonian decided not to run Doonesbury this week, kinda surprised this was posted.

Please wait...

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