A plea for more thoughtful comments

Posted May 29, 2024 21:38 UTC (Wed) by cytochrome (subscriber, #58718)
Parent article: A plea for more thoughtful comments

My sincere thanks to the editors for their tireless work and to the readers whose informed comments add substantive value to the pieces. I like the quota idea, but perhaps there could be additional levels of subscriptions that could bolster the LWN coffers through additional per-comment charges, for example

Open source license 'expert' (i.e. 'IANAL, but...') level: 1 extra comment per day
Richard-Stallman-devotee/sceptic level: 2 extra comments per day
Generally-grumpy-and-confrontational-hacker level: 3 extra comments per day
systemd-lover/hater level: 4 extra comments per day
No-matter-what-you-write-I-will-disagree level: 5 extra comments per day

Selling comment quotas

Posted May 29, 2024 21:48 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (9 responses)

An idea like that had actually crossed my mind, but I concluded that selling the right to irritate other LWN readers wasn't quite the business we wanted to be in.

Selling comment quotas

Posted May 30, 2024 5:55 UTC (Thu) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link] (6 responses)

How about limiting the number of comments / replies total any given user may post in a thread ? Maybe set to 5 comments per article per user ?

I have been guilty myself of "no but..." replies in threads, but I'm trying to do better. Life is too short to argue on the Internet :-).

That would have fixed the bitkeeper thread, where the main offenders (and I set one of the threads off, for which I apologise) would have quickly run out their comment allotment.

That way you're restricting *everyone* and letting them know the number of remaining rebuttals / urgent responses they have left to try and bludgeon their point :-). Might concentrate the mind wonderfully :-).

Selling comment quotas

Posted May 30, 2024 5:59 UTC (Thu) by jra (subscriber, #55261) [Link]

Maybe 5 comments per article for subscribers, and 2 comments per article from non-subscribers. That doesn't seem like you're selling the rights to irritate, but does give a benefit for subscribers.

And that's my 2 comments for this article, and I'm out :-).

Selling comment quotas

Posted May 30, 2024 6:14 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

Not sure I like the idea of a blanket limit per article. It would be a pity to make a genuinely informative back-and-forth or question-and-answer sequence impossible. There are places such as StackExchange that have such a policy, but there it comes with a "take it to separate discussion" option.

Selling comment quotas

Posted May 30, 2024 9:56 UTC (Thu) by mtthu (subscriber, #123091) [Link] (2 responses)

One idea: The users could grant another user more quota by upvoting a comment. Like: This was interesting to read, I would like to read more from this person. The user would get a notification that he or she earned more quota to comment on a topic. Everybody would start with a quota of 2 comments per article and should start off with a good comment to earn quota for more comments.

Selling comment quotas

Posted Jun 1, 2024 12:24 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (guest, #55989) [Link] (1 responses)

+1 i vote for you, i give you my residual second comment :)

Selling comment quotas

Posted Jun 2, 2024 20:59 UTC (Sun) by mtthu (subscriber, #123091) [Link]

Thanks a lot, you are my favourite Alter Ego ;-)

Selling comment quotas

Posted May 30, 2024 10:08 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

As a modification of that; instead of N comments per article per user, rate limit commenting. You are allowed a maximum of N comment permits per article in your bucket; your bucket starts out full, and replenishes at a slow rate (with lots of room to have the replenishment rate depend on commenting patterns - slower if you're doing things that look like you're involved in keeping flame wars going, faster if the editors think you're helping apply cooling balm to the burns).

This allows thoughtful threads to continue on for some time, since you can read the responses, and provide a reply to the pertinent points later, but it prevents rapid-fire flaming that degenerates into huge threads, since once I've used up my N comments, I have to wait hours to reply.

Selling comment quotas

Posted May 30, 2024 16:00 UTC (Thu) by kh (guest, #19413) [Link] (1 responses)

I think one of the issues with Comments is their permanence, which causes them to almost gain the weight of the article - but unlike the article, they lack the time that is put into proofreading and editing.

I wonder if a better system might be to by default delete all comments after 30 days. Maybe non-subscriber comments after 10 days. Site editors could make some comments permanent if they judged them to be especially helpful addendum to the original article. If someone wishes to write in stone, rather than sand, they can submit an article.

Selling comment quotas

Posted May 30, 2024 16:14 UTC (Thu) by jzb (editor, #7867) [Link]

That's a creative suggestion, but I don't think we want to disappear comments - we'd just like to see fewer threads that go into tangents where it's a few people arguing with each other at length and getting personal about it in the process. It would also be extra work for us to manually bless comments for permanence.