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Karl Bode over at Techdirt brings us news that NPR will no longer be allowing comments on its website in order to promote relationships and conversation:
For several years now we've documented the rise in websites that shutter their comment sections, effectively muzzling their own on-site communities. Usually this is because websites are too lazy and cheap to moderate or cultivate real conversation, or they're not particularly keen on having readers point out their inevitable errors in such a conspicuous location. But you can't just come out and admit this -- so what we get is all manner of disingenuous prattle from website editors about how the comments section is being closed because they just really value conversation, or are simply trying to build better relationships.
NPR appears to be the latest in this trend du jour, with Managing Editor of digital news Scott Montgomery penning a new missive over at the website saying the comments are closing as of August 23:
"After much experimentation and discussion, we've concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users. In order to prioritize and strengthen other ways of building community and engagement with our audience, we will discontinue story-page comments on NPR.org on August 23."
Again, nothing says we "love and are engaged with" our community quite like preventing them from being able to speak to you on site (this muzzle represents my love for you, darling). The logic is, as Montgomery proceeds to proclaim, that social media is just so wonderful, on-site dialogue is no longer important:
"Social media is now one of our most powerful sources for audience interaction. Our desks and programs run more than 30 Facebook pages and more than 50 Twitter accounts. We maintain vibrant presences on Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr. Our main Facebook page reaches more than 5 million people and recently has been the springboard for hundreds of hours of live video interaction and audience-first projects such as our 18,000-member "Your Money and Your Life" group."
And while those are all excellent additional avenues of interaction and traffic generation, it's still not quite the same as building brand loyalty through cultivating community and conversation on site. By outsourcing all conversation to Facebook, you're not really engaging in your readers, you're herding them to a homogonized[sic], noisy pasture where they're no longer your problem. In short, we want you to comment -- we just want you to comment privately or someplace else so our errors aren't quite so painfully highlighted and we no longer have to try to engage you publicly. All for the sake of building deeper relationships, of course.
Say it with me now: control the narrative at all costs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @04:07AM
> (it already kind of makes SN look bad to see blatantly racist posts like this with positive moderation).
It doesn't just make SN look bad, it pushes people away. I can just imagine buzzard swooping in to tell us that's great! Nothing of value was lost. Who needs those weak-minded idiots who aren't willing to slough through shit, anyway? If you can't handle SN at its worst, you don't deserve SN at its best! And then he'll proceed to pat himself on the back for defeating his 'enemies.'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @05:13AM
Yes, because it is far too cumbersome to mount an effective critique, and certainly there is nothing that SN needs but to grow to monolithic proportions.
Heaven forbid SN stray too far away from being on-message, and thank god there is a tireless army to mod every offending post into oblivion.
Here's a clue- simply calling out racism doesn't mean anything. Racist or not, if you can't (or more likely won't) deconstruct the argument, then your intellectual superiority isn't as assured as you think it is.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday August 19 2016, @05:49AM
I know you are going for sarcasm there, but it is actually true. To quote The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies [cryptome.org]:
Essentially, they quality posts take more time to write, and get buried in the shit-posts. Making things worse, self-moderated forums like this favour early posting: which will tend to be low-quality posts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @06:00AM
Gee, /pol/ makes the same arguments about the JDF.
Problem is you read my comment even though it is late in the thread and unmodded.
Truth of the matter is people use forums for validation and control of the narrative. And it is easier to give the illusion of consensus nor second-guessing your positions if there aren't any diverging points of view.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday August 19 2016, @06:33AM
Don't know what JDF means, but I do check forums like this for validation.
If somebody else said it already, I don't need to :)
I recently tired to help steer constructive discussion on some recent thunderf00t Youtube videos. That forum does not lend itself to productive discussion. Many posts just disappear: leading to people posing many, many redundant posts.
This site may still have high-quality because the server catches fire when a story gets near 200 posts or so. People actually have time to go through them: if they want. When a video has over 3,000 responses, nobody has time to read them all before posting possible duplicates.