Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Sunday March 18 2018, @09:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the fork-it dept.

The five-person team behind a simple WordPress plugin, which took three hours to code, never expected to receive worldwide attention as a result. But NRKbeta, the tech-testing group at Norway's largest national media organization, tapped into a meaty vein with the unveiling of last February's Know2Comment, an open source plugin that can attach to any WordPress site's comment section.

"It was a basic idea," NRKbeta developer Ståle Grut told a South By Southwest crowd on Tuesday. "Readers had to prove they read a story before they were able to comment on it."

[...] NRKbeta took its own advice when a staffer's 2016 article about "pictures of young girls shared on a 'boys forum'" exploded with "shouting and poor discussion" in the comment section. These posts came from readers who don't traditionally visit the NRK's tech-specific subsite, Grut noticed, and his team members decided to write about the rare eruption by asking readers, "What can you learn from meeting the comments section from hell?"

Commenters offered a variety of ideas, which included everything from comment voting to more active moderation. The staff mulled over what they could implement that would be low cost and low impact to its community, and Grut had his own eureka moment while showering before biking to the office: why not a quiz? A WordPress plugin could force users to correctly answer a few multiple-choice questions before the page's comment field would appear. Once he got to the office, he and fellow staffers spent three hours building the plugin, which Grut reminded the crowd is wholly open source.

Source: ArsTechnica


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday March 18 2018, @09:58AM (13 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Sunday March 18 2018, @09:58AM (#654409) Homepage Journal

    Get back to us when it works with Slash.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Funny=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 18 2018, @10:17AM (9 children)

    You're missing the primary flaw. To answer the questions you'd actually need to RTFA, which would cut allowed commenters for the entire community here down to about three: the first editor, the editor who seconded the story, and someone who randomly happened by for their first visit to the site.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by RS3 on Sunday March 18 2018, @01:28PM (4 children)

      by RS3 (6367) on Sunday March 18 2018, @01:28PM (#654453)

      You think anyone reads anything anymore? You sir, are an optimist. I like that.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @04:39PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @04:39PM (#654522)

        Apparently it's not required any more, even at the presidential level.

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @05:32PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @05:32PM (#654541)

          Where are your manners? Don't mess with Mr Clinton.

          • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Tuesday March 20 2018, @05:51PM

            by Osamabobama (5842) on Tuesday March 20 2018, @05:51PM (#655519)

            Don't mess with Mr Clinton.

            George Clinton hasn't been president for over a decade. <sigh>exhales<\sigh>...

            --
            Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
      • (Score: 2) by beckett on Monday March 19 2018, @08:12AM

        by beckett (1115) on Monday March 19 2018, @08:12AM (#654753)

        And My Axe!

    • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Sunday March 18 2018, @04:40PM

      by KiloByte (375) on Sunday March 18 2018, @04:40PM (#654525)

      the first editor, the editor who seconded the story,

      It's especially the editor who fails to RTFA. To a bigger extent on /., but Soylent isn't immune either.

      --
      Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
    • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday March 18 2018, @09:41PM

      by Pino P (4721) on Sunday March 18 2018, @09:41PM (#654588) Journal

      Furthermore, readers who wish to comment on the topic might happen to subscribe to sites other than those that host the featured article (paywalled) and the secondary source (also paywalled).

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @11:39PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @11:39PM (#654623)

      We had a "similar" item around this time last year.
      Norwegian Website Requires Readers to Answer 3 Questions Before They Can Comment [soylentnews.org]

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @05:13PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @05:13PM (#654537)

    Guess you didn't RTFA, cause you seem to have missed the Github link at the bottom of the summary. "The plugin is made for Wordpress, but the JavaScript component can easily be implemented into other CMS systems as well." Of course very few here care for JS, so it might have to be translated.
    You're pretty god at this stuff, you could probably hack this in to SN/ in 30 minutes. Of course getting it past TMB might take weeks, unless his fishing boat is broke.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @11:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 18 2018, @11:03PM (#654618)

      > You're pretty god at this stuff,...

      I see what you did there!

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 20 2018, @10:32AM

      Getting it past me wouldn't take that long. I could review the code itself in a morning. Getting Bytram(martyb) to test and sign off on it as QA guy is the bit that would take a while. He's exceedingly anal about his testing, which we lurve about him since he's the one doing all the testing.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.