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We consider reader participation an essential element of The Verge, but the Internet is filled with diverse viewpoints and what works for any given site may not work for another. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor and writer for The Atlantic, recently spoke with On The Media's Bob Garfield about his strict approach when dealing with online comments, and the tradeoffs between completely open and moderated conversations. Coates writes primarily on social and political issues, and utilizes a heavily-curated comment section: he sees his corner of the web as a dinner party, and if commenters aren't on-topic or polite by his standards, they are asked to leave. While he does call the policy "totalitarian," he also says it helps focus the discussion towards his specific readership — even if it limits the diversity of participating voices. Please check out the source to hear the entire conversation — and by all means, let us know your thoughts below!
Comments
It’s really a choice to make. More comments but less focused or less but more constructive and concise feedback. Personally I think it’s a balance. While not all irrelevant comments should be eliminated, rude and ‘troll’ comments should definitely be moderated.
rolfmaomachizlin - January 2, 2012
Honestly I don’t think it is worth the man power.
Either you have a band of no lifers that police the comments down to their level of stupidity, or you just leave it as it is and let people dig through it. Fact is most people don’t read comments, i rarely read them, so if there is a post worthy of going further I probably want to see all that has been said to decide for myself.
Bandalos - January 2, 2012
I would say you are incorrect. A lot of people read comments and participate. It is a strong point of the internet actually. And while some level of moderation is required, that level depends on the site and the focus.
A site can be fairly self-moderating as well. And while it is a lot of work it is not “a band of no-lifers” managing it. That comment is rather insulting to those who moderate forums.
Lomifeh - January 2, 2012
I think you would be more likely to read comments if you think the comments are more likely to be on-point and further thoughtful conversation. I’m more likely to read the comments at The Verge than I am at Engadget, but without any moderation here, The Verge’s comment section may be indistinguishable from the noise elsewhere.
MayorBloomberg - January 2, 2012
It’s possible to have some un-advertised, un-marked mods that silently delete troll/spam posts. You don’t need to make a huge fuss about it, just enough to get the low hanging fruit of the moderation world.
ImSpartacus - January 2, 2012
I’ve seen exactly 1 online forum where trolls are kept to a minimum and conversation is generally intelligent: Metafilter. Of course, they charge $5 to join. But this means 2 things:
1) Most people there are old enough to have a credit card, which alone limits 80%+ of trolls.
2) People who are there must really want to be there, since it’s actually costing them something.
They also have community policing, in the form of flagging that is actually followed up on.
Slashdot also has a nice (and free!) comment model, where everyone can join in, but it’s easy to filter what you see to only trusted people and worthwhile comments. I find it bizarre that more sites haven’t adopted this.
MichaelY - January 3, 2012
I haven’t been to Slashdot in years (2005-ish?). The comment section was most often a steaming pile of scathing brainrot. Have things cleaned up? I left that site largely because of the hostile user base.
zourtney - January 3, 2012
Dang. It’s 2012 now. I’ll amend “years” to be “years”. I feel old.
zourtney - January 3, 2012
There are more trolls there than ever, but…
1) log in
2) set the slider to only view posts over +2 or +3
3) trolls disappear
Like democracy, it’s a terrible system, but the alternatives are worse.
MichaelY - January 3, 2012
I’ll always remember when I first started a blog, and I had someone ‘troll’ on a post I’d worked hard on. After that I was always a little wary of what I put online, not because I’m afraid, but because I simply don’t wish to see some of the unpleasant things that people put on the internet.
I’m currently registered as a moderator on Engadget at the moment, and it’s like a torrent occasionally. The trouble is the anonymity aspect, you can’t ever make a solid decision about what someone is saying, because there’s no sarcasm meter or tone detection software, so it’s always a personal (moderator) judgement call. I certainly wouldn’t blame any site with a strict policy on comment moderation, as long as they have their heart in the right place.
ElliotJGuest - January 2, 2012
not saying you are one of them, but engadget is a terrible example. They have made disruptive commenters mods before. (thinking more mike than dom)
in other words, they like it, and do it, for the click fraud. And i don’t think it’s to strong a term, that’s pure click fraud.
JesseDegenerate - January 3, 2012
Engadget would be a tough one to moderate. But TechCrunch must be the hardest, because 80% of their articles are actually written by trolls.
MichaelY - January 3, 2012
You can moderate the heck out of your comments like gawker and still end up with dreck. Whatever gawker is doing, avoid it. They have commenter executions, and a system where a select few upvote newer accounts into viewability, in other words it becomes a sick little clique of enforced opinion.
Bandalos - January 2, 2012
I guess depends how commentator moderation is implemented. I think everyone should have equal rank in up voting or down voting comments. Promoted comments just makes the system ripe for abuse, and turns the system into a popularity contest. Not based on who can offer the most insightful post, but who can be the funniest.
Adam Meddaugh - January 2, 2012
no mods, no masters.
Bio10 - January 2, 2012
I think moderation is needed. While there will always be trolls that post, keeping it at a minimum by letting users know there’s punishment for spamming would be really appreciated.
ceramicsaturn - January 2, 2012
I’m not sure I agree. I believe, as long as you are not insulting on a personal level, your opinions (even if trolling) deserve to be heard. I may hate trolls as much as the next guy, but I think being able to voice opinions just adds to the flavor of the internet.
I think some moderation might be required when things get out of hand. But a report button and some downrank functionality serve this purpose.
handsome.rob - January 2, 2012
I agree in part. The anonymity of the net, and near-anonymity provided by pseudo-names on sites like this, will attract certain types of antagonistic personality, making a need for at least some degree of moderation unless the site is happy to become the next troll haven.
I used to read and contribute to the Ars Technica article forums but just don’t have the energy any more because the troll:contributor ratio was beyond what I could cope with. The site cracked down on blatant trolls so many trolls moderated their own behaviour below post-moderated level but continued posting as before.
Self/peer moderation is probably the answer but I’ve yet to see a commenting system which maintains the right balance. Any approach based on promotion/demotion system like The Verge’s ‘Recommend’, invariably ends-up as a I Agree / I Disagree popularity contest between posters. The Slashdot approach idea of distributing limited moderations points has merit but I think that work’s particularly well either as too few people can raise/drop posts into/out of visibility.
Right now I’m pretty happy with the signal:noise ratio on this site but I fear for the days when the trolls flock here en masse. Perhaps the ability to block some users is the answer – this gives each user the ultimate veto on other posters.
RobotPi - January 3, 2012
I personally think community moderation works well. Implement a down rank button and have extremely unpopular comments be automatically spoiler’d.
Adam Meddaugh - January 2, 2012
actually that sucks because it ends up the way Bandalos said.
Bio10 - January 2, 2012
The problem with Gawkers system is allowing users with a lot of “like” power controlling discussion by bumping comments they see favorable up to the top of the page.
The main issue with paid moderation is there seems to be no transparency with it. Many times just relying on the Disqus system to flag a comment for review after it finally receives dozens of reports.
Adam Meddaugh - January 2, 2012
Community moderation has a tendency to backfire in a lot of ways. You end up with the “top” comments all being inside jokes, memes, internal references and other one-liners. While the bottom ranked comments will consist of everything from spam/trash to simply unpopular opinions. You end up with more polarization, more exclusivity and more ‘circle-jerks’.
Community moderation tends to move away from the common user and reward the loudest, most opinionated, most frequent and most entitled users.
Qfax - January 2, 2012
Fair enough. Perhaps transparent professional moderation would be the best option.
I guess my main issue with it. Is it seems like nothing gets done at all when it comes to particularly nasty comments.
That could also be attributed to a lack of growth in the moderation team as a comment section grows. The Verge doesn’t appear to have this problem yet but it’s still pretty under the radar as far as mainstream tech sites go.
Adam Meddaugh - January 2, 2012
Look at YouTube comments, tells you all you need to know about the totally hands-off approach and waiting for comments to be flagged.
A good community like the site I write for can police comments well, trolls are ignored or shouted down in such a way they move on & spam is reported, so much so there’s hardly ever an issue despite each article attracting 20-300 comments and many 10’s or 10o’s of thousands of hits (depending how well it flys)
cc_star - January 2, 2012
Being polite and on topic is important.
If you don’t get that then you’re clearly nuts!
The Brazil nut isn’t actually a nut, but a seed. It seems a lot of people have had trouble finding them in shops lately and it’s unclear why. Maybe it’s because they’re harvested in the wild rather than at plantations and so yields can’t be very tightly controlled or maybe the trees are just disappearing with the rest of the rain forests.
Funderful - January 2, 2012
#randomfactwin
backporchprophet - January 2, 2012
Well, I don’t have any answers. It is something that pretty much every site grapples with. Sometimes I feel like the internet is “over-commented” and too many sites make it a priority to expressly encourage and welcome user commentary. There is a value in just letting the content speak for itself and if there are factual errors or whatever then that can be handled through email and “letters to the editor”. But just the same, commenting is fun and can be productive in its own way.
I think it is something every site has to figure out for themselves. Does The Verge want to be the site where it is okay to call people idiot fanboys when they disagree with something you said? Do they want to be the site which bans users for calling people idiot fanboys? I feel like either way you’ll attract and repulse a crowd. That’s kind of the best thing about the internet though. If someone doesn’t like the way you run your site, they are free to find a site they do like, and it doesn’t preclude the possibility that others will like the way you run things.
Qfax - January 2, 2012
Whatever it was, I don’t want what happened to Engadget. There will always be trolls – hell, anyone can become a troll sometime. Gizmodo moderate the hell out of commenters, but at the same time, they let their own ego dictate the bans (I got booted out for criticizing the author) and didn’t really lead to any better comments. It is also the type of articles on the site that dictates the type of commenters – more click-bait articles the site has, the nastier the readers become, and they stick around for the flame to be fed.
I think the bottom line is that interesting articles draw interesting comments, and moderation is a delicate balancing act – perhaps personally warning trollish behavior may be the way to go: if the person turns out to be unreasonable, then outright ban may be justified.
lecti - January 2, 2012
Come join the rest of us at Jesus Diaz/ Kat Hannaford Victims Anonymous! We have a killer buffet spread for lunch.
Herr_Synnberg - January 2, 2012
Two words: Comment Editing!
(Just kidding) I think, personally, that The Verge’s current system for commenting is perfectly fine, I have yet to run into any conversation thread that has been overly annoying. At times, it has seemed to lax, but many of the Verge’s readers/commentators are very good about self moderating one another, and it works pretty well.
BriZap - January 2, 2012
we still need a way to get notified when someone responds to our comments.
CMG90 - January 2, 2012
i think one of the reasons this has not been implemented, is it fans troll flames. It’s a shame because i agree 100% and miss it.
JesseDegenerate - January 3, 2012
BEEP!
Mich - January 2, 2012
i enjoy this post and the comments.
bootoo - January 2, 2012
Add an edit button, a notification system and we’re good to go!
Moderators will always be over-doing or under-doing, there is no sweet spot and as long as a comment isn’t blatantly offensive, let people speak their minds… If i feel like saying “I wanna rub a Galaxy Nexus on my face” like Joshua did, just let me be :p
maharbert - January 2, 2012
Great timing! I’d love to hear the thoughts of Kelly Hickock, the resident pro-SOPAn, on this article.
rikkit - January 3, 2012
I love that the comments are Verge are generally polite, easy to read, and on-topic. I also like that there are not dozens of pages of comments to “wade” through. Whether this is due to moderation, or simply the community,, I hope it continues.
EnerJi - January 3, 2012
i don’t really want the verge to moderate comments. i find reading comments entertaining even the dumb fanboy arguments. my only problem is that there can be too many comments to sort through sometimes and i would appreciate user based voting up and down of comments and discussions.
sle0609 - January 3, 2012
I’m a fan of letting the crowd moderate. Give them a downrank option and the ability to sort comments by:
Order/time
Rating
Controversy
The last is an idea I’ve had and I’ve never seen a site do. Some sites that do plus and minus voting simply add the two together. So, when you rank by best rating, a post could have a rating of +2 , putting it towards the bottom in terms of interesting but it is actually a +2002/-2000 rating, meaning that it is extremely controversial and by definition interesting. You fix that by showing both the ups and downs (as some sites do) and having some sort of metric that is higher the more controversial it is. I can’t think of a good way to do that off the top of my head but I’m sure it could be done.
Minjin - January 3, 2012
I don’t frequent sites that don’t have a comment section. Heck, I was reading a BOOK the other day and was frustrated at the fact that I couldn’t comment on one of the author’s more absurd proclamations.
isights - January 3, 2012
I’m a huge fan of comments- I learn just as much if not more than the original article sometimes. I think sites that don’t have comments are stupid. Yes its their right, but that doesn’t mean its a good idea.
But you have to have good moderation. Trolls and personal attacks just just be deleted- no warning. Off topic conversations are fine. Just keep the level of discussion high. It may be a bit of work, but if you don’t like it, get off the internet.
bdawk4ever - January 3, 2012
What about crowd-sourced filtering? Each thread/comment has a “Mute” or “Ignore” (etc) button which users can press and – you guessed it – mute that comment or thread.
However, the mute/ignore count is invisibly weighted – users can’t see the score, but the server can. Add in a comment filter that allows you to ignore all comments/threads that fall below a certain muted/ignored threshold, or possibly reorganize the comments section based upon a “usefulness metric” (higher user participation and lower mutes/ignores), etc etc.
I might be missing something in my logic here, but it seems that this is a way to moderate comments without leaving the system entirely in the hands of mods or the community. The user can decide the level of exposure to trolls and flames and memes he or she wants – with or without hand holding.
iSkurvy - January 3, 2012
I’m going to be daring and thank The Verge for not yet implementing a ranking system. Both for comments and users in general.
We do need a way to track replies, and the upvoting feature is nice. But even well-implemented reputation systems (like StackOverflow) end up with “rep whores”, who seek some form internet approval. And I’m as guilty as anyone. This “missing feature” is actually a breath of fresh air.
ratecommentsubscribeguys!!!1
zourtney - January 3, 2012
AKA, they refuse to be like Engadget LOL.
Jungle - January 3, 2012
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