Worst online comments — Part 2
July 16th, 2008 by Alex Pickett in Blogroll, Random ActsA few days ago, I ripped into TBO.com’s commenters as the worst in the area. I (quietly) received a few whispers and e-mails from people agreeing with me. Yes, differing opinions — even caustic ones — are great for media, but out-and-out libel, racism or cruelness? Those kind of commenters can quickly turn readers off from a website or blog.
I’m not the only one to think so. Time writer Lev Grossman recently editorialized on these hostile trolls, highlighting a guest blogger for the Stranger, an alternative weekly out of Seattle, who abruptly quit her gig because commenters had become too cruel. But it’s not just newspapers, he writes, but everything on the web from Flikr to YouTube:
A random example: on June 11, a user called way21337 uploaded a video to YouTube. It’s titled My new gerbil, and it shows, in fact, a black-and-white gerbil snuffling around cutely in somebody’s hand. It is 11 seconds long. By press time, it had acquired 102 comments. Let’s take a look! They begin with NewTyhuss, who writes, “sweet!” Things start going south with comment No. 4: “id hit it.” (Good one, ZRace67!) After a week, we’re down to eldergod: “why dont u shove that gerbil up yur ass and quit posting stupid videos.” bwalhof writes, “kill yourself. fast.” And so on.
Grossman sums up my feelings fairly well:
The horribleness of commenters isn’t really a mystery: Internet anonymity is disinhibiting, and people are basically mean anyway. Nor is it a mystery why the people who run websites put up with commenters: the economic model for Internet content is based on advertising, which means it’s based on traffic volume, and comments mean traffic. They’re part of the things that make online publishing work. TIME.com enables comments on its blogs, including mine.) It’s just hard to tell whether they’re ruining the Web faster than they can save it.
(As for the Stranger blogger, looks like she’s back up with a little extra dough from her employer …)
Send to a friend:
July 16th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
This conversation has been going on for a while on the Gillmor Gang podcasts, when they can break away from Twitter chat, among other places. Allowing anonymous commenting is a poor idea. My feeling is that your blog is your property, and you can set up whatever barriers to entry you want. Free speech is great; abusive commenters are free to set up their own blogs. I don’t object to using Open ID or similar systems to enable commenting privileges. For myself, I use the Discus system, so that if I ever do get a comment, I will be able to track the conversation easily. It seems that most abusers aren’t willing to jump a hurdle or two in order to vent their craven emotions.
July 17th, 2008 at 11:54 am
good points. I think I’ve argued for anon commenting, but after seeing its effects, I’m starting to reconsider too. thanks for the input.