Control comments but KISS
Posted Nov 20, 2003 20:37 UTC (Thu) by
crp (guest, #9175)
Parent article:
On comment abuse
I'm a subscriber who mostly reads just the news content, however
I have increasingly started reading comments on topics that I find
particularly interesting to see "other perspectives" or extra bits
of information.
Concentrating dispersed information and "wisdom" this way is
extremely powerful -- just as free software concentrates
distributed skills and knowledge.
Just like free software, however, having this process produce a
useful result for a general audience requires a certain amount of
filtering and distillation. Some patches are bad and some
comments are bad for the community that you are trying to build.
I'm generally in favor of strong editorial control to create
useful communities.
I think that allowing antisocial elements to hijack this useful
aspect of LWN would be dereliction of your responsibility as an
editor and a leading force in the LWN "community".
Whatever editorial controls you decide to implement I urge you
to Keep It Simple. Complicated systems are easier to screw with
and Trolls probably get as much entertainment out of messing up
your system as actually enraging readers.
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