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Editorial deletionsEditorial deletionsPosted Apr 9, 2010 23:25 UTC (Fri) by jordanb (guest, #45668)In reply to: Editorial deletions by corbet Parent article: Ubuntu switches search back to Google
I think there's a huge disconnect between the quality of LWN's content and the quality of the comments. There seem to be some highly opinionated curmudgeonly people here who really have the capability of destroying conversations, and it's a real disappointment to me.
I subscribe to LWN because its articles are valuable to me as a professional programmer, and I think the editors should try to bring the quality level of the comments up to the standards one finds in professional venues.
If it were up to me, I would:
1) Require that everyone who wishes to comment supply their real name. Have the real name attached to every post and police the use of aliases.
2) Provide a publicly viewable comment history for every member, indexable by real name and user name.
3) Allow people to edit or delete posted comments for a period of time. Give people a chance to fix their own enraged-posting mistakes.
4) Draft explicit guidelines for posting, requiring people be on-topic and avoid personal insults.
5) Delete all posts that violate the guidelines.
Of course it's you're site. But I think you overstate the 'slippery slope' or 'anti-censorship' argument. LWN is hardly the only place on the internet that blowhards can make themselves heard.
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Editorial deletions Posted Apr 10, 2010 12:32 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Real names are, I think, a waste of time. What really matters is *reputations*, and a comment history would provide that, perhaps in combination with an easily-visible 'number of comments' counter (so you can tell if someone is a drive-by without needing to dig down to their comment history).
If someone doesn't care that his reputation makes him out to be a destroyer of conversations, I can't see how having his real name attached would change things.
Editorial deletions Posted Apr 10, 2010 15:04 UTC (Sat) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
See Slashdot for an example of how reputation systems tend to promote groupthink and uninformed speculation. (That said, without moderation the comments would surely be even worse.)
Editorial deletions Posted Apr 11, 2010 9:28 UTC (Sun) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331) [Link]
I'm not quite sure that Slashdot's system is the best. There's a vast diversity in moderation systems, and not all of them necessarily seem to promote groupthink. Reddit's, for example, seems to function much better than Slashdot's.
Editorial deletions Posted Apr 11, 2010 4:40 UTC (Sun) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link]
Some of the most toxic people here are regulars. But they use ungoogleable pseudonyms as their usernames, which suggests that they have some shame. My thinking is that if people know that a google search will bring up their LWN rants for future employers, etc. they might think twice.
But really, I'm thinking that the potential role of the LWN comment section should be a professional discussion forum for our industry. If nothing else, using real names helps set the tone, and emphasizes the idea that isn't just another internet grandstanding platform.
Shaping the conversation Posted Apr 16, 2010 8:31 UTC (Fri) by biged (subscriber, #50106) [Link]
Seconded: the comment stream should be a professional forum.
I notice that the comment page requests us to be polite, respectful, and informative: these are the values of the site, and comments should conform to those values.
I filled in the user survey, and hated having to note that I was considering not renewing. In fact I hope to remain a subscriber - the articles are excellent, as are the best comments - but if I have to wade through flame wars, if I can't shape what I see and if the editors can't help me, if I stop reading because it's not worth it, then at some point I'll stop paying.
Personally, I read the RSS feed, and that works well if the noise level is tolerably low. Previously I read the comments in context, but that works best if I wait for a week or ten days, which is not a good bargain.
So, two ideas, not new:
Keep the noise level down: by suitable in-band prompting, private messaging or selective defacement.
Help the subscriber to read the comment stream in context: Support a kill-file, have a per-user RSS feed to allow per-article feeds, have a per-user per-article last-read date to offer a per-user page of articles with new comments.
Shaping the conversation Posted Apr 16, 2010 9:22 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
are you aware of the page http://lwn.net/Comments/unread that gives you per-user lists of new comments (grouped by articles)? it sounds like it's close to one of the things you are asking for.
Shaping the conversation Posted Apr 16, 2010 9:27 UTC (Fri) by biged (subscriber, #50106) [Link]
Entirely unaware: thanks for pointing it out!
Shaping the conversation Posted Apr 19, 2010 12:41 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
This really needs to be easier to find - even knowing that it exists I had a hard time finding it every time until I'd memorised it. It really doesn't help that the URL is case sensitive.
Shaping the conversation Posted Apr 16, 2010 17:05 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] FWIW, we have per-article RSS feeds now. They're in the metadata headers, so your browser should make it easy to subscribe to them.Stay tuned for other stuff...
Shaping the conversation Posted Apr 16, 2010 17:17 UTC (Fri) by biged (subscriber, #50106) [Link]
Thanks! For Chrome I needed the extension "RSS Subscription Extension (by Google)", and now I see the RSS icon for article pages.
(For the personal new-comments page, I see it's mentioned in the FAQ, which of course I hadn't read.)
Editorial deletions Posted Apr 16, 2010 8:17 UTC (Fri) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link] Jordan, you made one of the most ornery, curmudgeonly, off-topic comments on LWN I've ever seen. Or rather, you made such a comment sandwiched in between two paragraphs of on-topic bread.It was funny as hell and I love ya for it. Wheat that good is worth sifting through some chaff for, even chaff that includes moronic and hackneyed semi-jokes like muwlgr's.
Editorial deletions Posted Apr 17, 2010 16:32 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
I half-agree on 1. That is it'd be nice if people could supply a more descriptive name (potentially their "real" one) and have it shown with their username, if they wish. I don't think it should be required - doubt such a policy is workable, never mind about desirable.
I disagree with Nix below that "real" names don't matter. A "real" name can definitely make it easier to recognise people.
+1 on 2 and 3.
0 to -1 on 4. I don't think there's any point having LWN waste energy formulating policies. I don't think there's any point in anything beyond guidelines like:
"Try add value with your comments. Try be polite, especially in the face of disagreement or perceived insults."
Completely disagree on 5, except to the extent required by court orders (or other similarly hard-to-not-comply-with orders).
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