/lit/ - Literature

[Patrick Pexton No.3532650]

>My two-year term as The Post’s independent ombudsman has run out. It has been both a privilege to serve Post readers as a pipeline to the staff and an honor to work in a newsroom of such distinguished journalists. I hope I succeeded even a little in explaining how journalism is changing in a media world transformed by new technology and new business models.

>The No. 1 topic of complaint to the ombudsman during my term: The Post’s online comment system. About 10 percent of those complaints were about its functionality, which The Post has improved. Another 10 percent were from people who feel they were unfairly censored. But the rest were from readers who like the idea of online comments but abhor the hatefulness, name-calling, racism and ideological warfare that are constant features of The Post’s commenting stream.

>Early on, I was a fan of the give-and-take and anonymous nature of this electronic Hyde Park corner. Now I’m not.

>What turned me were the truly ugly comments on a Feb. 4 article by Krissah Thompson on the high school football coach who criticized first lady Michelle Obama’s derriere. I was watching the online comment stream the night the story was published, and the moderators could barely delete fast enough the racist, sexist and crude comments. I don’t think comments like those should be within 10 miles of The Washington Post’s masthead. And readers agree; those who wrote in said it hurts the publication’s brand and reputation.

>I think The Post should move, as the Miami Herald did recently, away from anonymous responses to a system that requires commenters to use their real names and to sign in via Facebook. It would reduce the volume of comments but raise the level of discussion and help preserve The Post’s brand.

Outside of truly risky civic or creative endeavors that speak truth to power, why advocate for anonymity that merely leads to hatefulness, name-calling, racism and ideological warfare?

[Anonymous No.3532651]

shut up you god damn nigger liberal faggot

[Anonymous No.3532652]

>caring about a newspaper's online comment policy

[Anonymous No.3532654]

Because the whole point of the internet is to make wildly sensational and/or baseless claims without them being actually ascribed to you.

I don't troll, nor do I write anything too offensive, but I still don't want my internet presence to be like a second form of ID or anything.

[Patrick Pexton No.3532666]

>>3532652
>words don't have secondary effects

lol

[Anonymous No.3532669]

does anyone else think that most online comments that are racist, sexist, homophobic, etc are astro-turfing?

if you ever read them they all sound the same and they're all about the same length

[Anonymous No.3532673]

>>3532652
http://www.livescience.com/27239-online-comments-skew-science-perception.html

[Anonymous No.3532700]

>>3532669
Take it from me: racists, sexists, and homophobes exist. They're not imaginary. They write letters to the editor, and they damn well post on news websites and 4chan. It's not an elaborate ruse (at least not all the time).

[Anonymous No.3532717]

>>3532700
i don't doubt that they exist, i just have a hard time believing such a high proportion and volume of people have such beliefs

it not only goes against survey data, but the demographics of these sites are young, college age people who are the least religious/sexist/racist/etc of all demographics

[Anonymous No.3532750]

>>3532717
if we're speaking about newspaper websites, they generally skew older and more conservative. If we're speaking about 4chan, then we can assume a great deal of it is trolling - but 4chan, we should remind ourselves, is the tiniest of internet corners and occupied mostly by children.

Also, the most polarized tend to be the most vocal. I forget the scientific definition for how that works, but maybe someone will help me out with that one.

[Anonymous No.3532760]

>>3532750
somewhat related - http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/loudest-political-voices-extreme/story?id=8930014

Think of the most moderate website or media organization you can. Think of five, even.

Now think of 5 extremely partisan website or media organization. Which 5 were easier to think of?

[Anonymous No.3532766]

anonymity could work if we had moderators or self-moderating system

also an intelligence test is required before you post or VIP status of some kind

[Anonymous No.3532782]

Because having a place to exercise freedom of speech without liberal lynch mobs is important.

[Anonymous No.3532784]

anonymity is the penultimate leveler second to death

so it's the ultimate practical one

plz rescind w/e jew/associated press/republican/illuminati/masonic/feminist/homosexual/darkie/cracker/academic/ching-wong-wiggity control agenda you're pushing 2 stop the inevitable thnxs

regurds,

normal people who would get a chance to Say Something (tm) for once

[Anonymous No.3532786]

>>3532782
>being a le edgy ironic conservative

funny how your life is basically a meme, loser

[Anonymous No.3532793]

>The Washington Post gave media space to a high school football coach's comments on the first lady's ass.
>They think the comments are the problem.

[Anonymous No.3532794]

>>3532784
the joke's on you, those who choose anonymity are considered human scum by people who stand by their actions (ie, heroes)

and by the way, the penultimate leveler is government

[Anonymous No.3532798]

>>3532786
What's funny is how many posts you've made in this thread to clarify your stupidity.

[Anonymous No.3532800]

>>3532793
>Vandals are scrawling slurs on our outside walls under cover of night, sir.
>Get rid of them.
>The vandals?
>The walls.

[Anonymous No.3532808]

>>3532798
>FUCKIN LIBERAL

[Anonymous No.3532811]

>>3532808
>>>being a le edgy ironic conservative
I don't have a problem with liberalism, I have a problem with twitter knights harassing people for making jokes on the internet.

[Anonymous No.3532814]

>>3532800
>Vandals are scrawling slurs on our gigantic metal penis sculpture under cover of night, sir.
>Get rid of them.
>The vandals?
>The penis
Fixed that for you.

[Anonymous No.3532842]

>>3532650
>the high school football coach who criticized first lady Michelle Obama’s derrier

Sounds like a stupid, gossipy, political entertainment article designed to get page views from as wide an audience as possible. "Oh my god where are all these low-brow comments coming from. We're way too respectable for this." they said while pandering to the lowest common denominator possible.

I'm sure there are thousands of other, more in depth and serious articles that only get a handful of bland to mildly interesting responses despite being anonymous.

[Anonymous No.3532847]

There's a market for anonymous comment systems. The Post wants control, and the ability to exercise great care in their product presentation. The comments are part of that presentation. Their business, their methods, it's all good.

My own local paper used an anonymous comment system at one point. It's important to me to see how the greater community thinks. Anytime some dealer got popped there was a huge outpouring of sympathy. For some it's disturbing to see, I'd rather know the truth.

Similarly there were some raging comments about the public works department, some creatively delivered, and too detailed to be pure screed. It may have been from some of the competition, but, yet again, it was nice to learn the truth of the biggest distribution system in town - a year before the paper could confirm that truth with a story detailing their bust. If you just followed the paper that bust was something from out of left field, and quite the surprise.

The paper has changed the system, made it more "robust," and the commentary is now bland. They're fine with that, and so am I, the unfiltered stuff moved off to another site, and I can still stay informed about my town, a year before the paper catches up.

The Post should do this, and stay out of the business of cutting edge stuff. I like to read the detail analysis that is their forte, even be it after the fact.

[Anonymous No.3532851]

>>3532673
This article is 100 percent propaganda crapola.

[Anonymous No.3532859]

>>3532847
are you talking about craigslist rants and raves?

[Anonymous No.3532864]

>>3532859

I was not aware that craigslist acted as a local paper for anyone, anywhere.

[Anonymous No.3532874]

>>3532851
University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I stopped reading there

You should have as well[/spoiler

[Anonymous No.3532958]

Why would people "like the idea of online comments?" Literally the only reason to post one besides raw shitposting is if you think the writer took a wrong tack on something and want the other viewpoint aired, which is theoretically useful but went unextant for millenia and isn't really necessary at a decent publication.

"Decent publication" meaning here one that features the whole range of arguments its regular readership are likely to be concerned with- for the Post, this is the rough range from those that would come out of Dennis Kucinich's mouth to those that would come out of Paul Ryan's, stretched to Bernie Sanders and the Pauls on occasion. For, say, n+1, we're talking something that would encompass Foucault and Chomsky and exclude, say, either Greg Mankiw or Geert Wilders. The idea is to have people smarter and better-spoken than your readers making the arguments they would shit out in response.

"Amen, Obama is a dumbass/savior, the Republicans are heroes/dickwads we need to reverse the war on women/christmas" is not something any reasonable person is going to feel the need to air immediately after it already has been.

Weirder still is the idea that anyone would possibly associate comments random fucks leave with "The Washington Post's masthead."

[Anonymous No.3532970]

>>3532750
>is the tiniest of internet corners

4chan is a relatively extremely popular website.

[Anonymous No.3532973]

>>3532958
It depends on the site. Lots of personal blogs that are well enough known in specific, cohesive scenes tend to get actual responses and discussion in a thinkpiece post or essay or whatever. It depends heavily on the scene, maybe they'll just do a response post. Maybe they're a high traffic commercial newspaper and just get hit with spam. Maybe no one bothers commenting. It depends.
Requiring accounts makes for inclusive and circlejerking scenes, for the smaller ones atleast, imo, or just makes it for little comment culture at all.

[Anonymous No.3532989]

>not reading BBC for the sole reason that it's the only news source where you don't have dumbasses spouting their opinions everywhere
Seriously, that's what 4chan is for.

[Anonymous No.3532993]

>>3532973
>Lots of personal blogs that are well enough known in specific, cohesive scenes tend to get actual responses and discussion in a thinkpiece post or essay or whatever

This is true, and I didn't think about that (I read a few, actually), but they tend to be monovocal sites on a single, relatively unimportant topic with assiduous moderation. The best example I can think of is The Online Photographer, a blog run by Mike Johnston with occasional posts by others. He's seldom writing about politics or how to conduct one's life. Most contentiously, he's writing cultural crit or something about journalistic ethics. And he personally screens every comment before its posted.

But any polyvocal, widely read, general topic publication? You just don't see real discussions happening. At best, you get people making lucid objections to stuff the writer said. At worst, you get deranged flames. And the dipshits chiming in to amen. Registration doesn't seem to improve anything.

[Anonymous No.3533006]

>>3532989
>BBC
>dumbasses spouting their opinions

lol

[Anonymous No.3533061]

>>3532993
>But any polyvocal, widely read, general topic publication

Sorry mate, I'm too patrician to know what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.3533063]

Is the ombudsman the guy who sells weed to all the others?

[Anonymous No.3533749]

>>3532650
>Outside of truly risky civic or creative endeavors that speak truth to power, why advocate for anonymity that merely leads to hatefulness, name-calling, racism and ideological warfare?

its how we know who to avoid.
build a ghetto and let fools deport themselves into it.
let make this utopia together

[Anonymous No.3533790]

Remove comment pages on articles in general.

I don't give a shit what some random guy from around the world thinks about the issue, would rather listen to journalists who have at least some qualifications to talk about the subject. Hate how all news and sites care about 'your opinion' or opinions in general: news should be first and foremost about what reporting what has happened and trying to make it as clear as possible to people. Opinions are separate.

For example, the one example I think is good in my country is the BBC and Newsnight. The BBC news simply reports on the stories and shows like Newsnight exist and allow discussion of opinions on the stories. Keep them separate.