I hate the whole "don't read the comments" crap. It's like burying your head in the sand and saying "I don't want to hear anything that I may not like."
I get it. Anonymous people on the internet are assholes. What I don't get is how letting anonymous assholes typing things you've seen hundreds of times keep you from finding some signal in the noise is a good idea. There are some great insights to be found out there. Not everyone has enough insight to write an entire fresh blog post, or maybe someone's blog post was the spark needed to light the thoughts.
It's like saying we shouldn't eat potatoes and carrots because they grow in the dirt and the dirt is gross and nasty. Missing out on smart comments, extra contributions, corrections or anything related to the article because a mean person said some bad words that made you feel bad is pretty immature.
You can wash the dirt off a carrot and you're left with a tasty carrot.
Sometimes people are being told by hundreds of other people to "go hang yourself"; "put your face in a toaster"; "get raped"; and so on. Sometimes the threats are from a few people but more direct. "I know where you live and I'm going to rape you".
Please don't underestimate the volume or unpleasantness of modern online trolling. People find it significantly stressful, and some people die as a result of it.
I would turn off comments for any blog I had, but include some kind of email address. This would increase the amount of junk in my inbox but reduce the amount of useless pointless crap (which is what most Internet comments are).
It's just a question of how much noise you're willing to tolerate in hopes of a signal. Would you till a whole field for just one or two carrots?
With a few exceptions, websites no longer attract a high enough percentage of the smart, articulate, responsible commenters to make a comments section worthwhile.
The best discussions now happen on forums and aggregators like Slashdot, HN, subreddits, etc., or via competing blog posts promoted on social media. Corrections and related links work well on Twitter.
> I get it. Anonymous people on the internet are assholes. What I don't get is how letting anonymous assholes typing things you've seen hundreds of times keep you from finding some signal in the noise is a good idea. There are some great insights to be found out there.
The way I see it, is anonymity itself is the problem. I don't bother reading comments anywhere, because the chance of me being "enlightened" is slim to none. I have no idea who is posting, or if what they are posting is true, or who they are. I'm more likely to get quality reading out of books on specific topics I want to learn. Comments are just a waste of time. I think HN is the one place left which still has decent comments.
You are effectively anonymous to me. (Granted: It is really pseudonymity.) I know nothing about you. I could check out your comment history to get a little better idea of you as a person, but doing that for every single person whose comments interest me would be time consuming and probably would not provide much benefit.
And yet, you've offered ideas here that I may not have considered on my own. I find value in that regardless of whether I ultimately agree, disagree, or choose not to consider it further.
HN has a variety of comments, some excellent, some mindless, but most effectively anonymous. So I don't think I can agree that anonymity is the problem.
Perhaps the problem is accountability. HN (and really, any comments section that is still worthwhile) has methods for punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior. Or maybe we are simply lucky enough to be small enough to not be that interesting to trolls.
I guess which sites you visit influences the quality of the comments a whole lot more than anonymity or not.
At least my experience is that some of the most thoughtless and intolerant people are the same who will happily post using Facebook login, full name etc.
I get it. Anonymous people on the internet are assholes. What I don't get is how letting anonymous assholes typing things you've seen hundreds of times keep you from finding some signal in the noise is a good idea. There are some great insights to be found out there. Not everyone has enough insight to write an entire fresh blog post, or maybe someone's blog post was the spark needed to light the thoughts.
It's like saying we shouldn't eat potatoes and carrots because they grow in the dirt and the dirt is gross and nasty. Missing out on smart comments, extra contributions, corrections or anything related to the article because a mean person said some bad words that made you feel bad is pretty immature.