Popular Science Is Getting Rid of Comments

Daniel_Stuckey writes "From an article announcing the sites' decision to do away with comments: 'It wasn't a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter. ... even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story, recent research suggests. ... A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.'" This comes alongside news that Google is trying to clean up YouTube comments by adding integration with Google+. "You’ll see posts at the top of the list from the video’s creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles."

Moo

[Chacham]

In other news, Slashdot has decided to get rid of the commenting system, noting that most comments are not informative, and only serve to derail the important points with discussions of overlords, hot grits, and first posts. Instead, only the Slashdot team will be able to comment, limited to which "dept" the story came from.

The change on slashdot was well received according to the poll asking about it. The one choice, Cowboy Neal, which was explained to mean "yes", was the overwhelming choice by voters. The change is expected to make it easier on new users.

Erstwhile administrator and founder Cmdr Taco, said simply, "In Soviet Russia, this is how we did it."

Re:Hurrah Slashdot!

[Frosty Piss]

Seriously. I can't think of a better system for comment handling. Just move the sliders aaaaaaall the way to the right and never see another troll!

Sliders? I'm viewing this in Lynx.

Re:It's a fact.

[linear a]

And to keep in the spirit of comments in general, they're Worse Than Hitler, Satan And JarJar Binks All Rolled Into One!!!!!!!!!

Re:Moo

[pspahn]

Aside from proper indenting on replies?

Re:Moo

[Samantha Wright]

I have an easier idea—why not just get rid of first posts? Most of the trouble stems from those. The rule would be simple; if a news article has zero comments on it, no one is allowed to post until it has more.

Re:Sour grapes

[EmperorArthur]

Maybe captchas should be supplemented with logic puzzles to ensure commenters are actually capable of rational thought as well as pattern recognition.

If we did that, we'd lose half the comments.

Re:It's a fact.

[thexfile]

JarJar Hitler is the worst. "mesa going to send you to hella"

Re:the difference

[Eunuchswear]

The problem is step (2), which is a lot of self-serving bollocks.

No, step 2 is correct. It's just that "unusually intelligent" should be read like "differently abled" rather than "very intelligent".

It's unusual to see people as dumb as many slashdot posters.

(Whether this applies to this post or not is up to the reader to decide).

Re:Moo

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Aside from proper indenting on replies?

Also don't forget that the Slashdot comment system correctly rejects un-American thoughts, especially those written in foreign languages with weird characters.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

26 letters was enough for God to write the Bible, it's good enough for me.

Re:It's a fact.

[Salgak1]

No: JarJar Hitler actually says:

"mesa got a Final Solution for de Jedi Problem". . .