Do comments sections on websites add value?

I follow a few people that are active on MyBB and get daily e-mail with snippets of their comments. Some I started following for their views on a specific topic but tend to get me looking at other issues as well I wouldn't have considered - so very valuable.

I rather browse to comments section from e-mail rather than browse articles on MyBB itself as I find the click to SHOW COMMENTS button highly annoying.
 
They can, but with the amount of trolls posting it's hardly worth the effort
 
Comments or bust

News sites that do not have a comment section have something to hide.

Haters. That's the main problem with comments sections: people who hate the publication, people who hate the community, etc. I'd like a separate comment section for haters. A button that says "SHOW HATERS" would be grand.
 
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Rouxenator said:
I do not read IOL or News24 and as of late no EWN. If you don't allow me to express my views then you just want to use me for views and ad income.
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Only time I read those sites is when they have a live feed of an event if I can't watch a video stream ie: court cases etc.
 
Personally I sometimes scroll down and read the comments more than the article itself. It is not as troll infested as some would make it out to be.
 
MyBroadband comment section is a breeding ground for racism and distasteful behaviour. Comments ad no value, all it does is it creates an environment for hatred among fellow human beings. Drop the comments!
 
ZedOne said:
MyBroadband comment section is a breeding ground for racism and distasteful behaviour. Comments ad no value, all it does is it creates an environment for hatred among fellow human beings. Drop the comments!
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Just because you don't like the truth or don't agree with someones point of view does not make it racist.
 
I think they are just generally funny. It seems to be a good place to vent out one's frustrations lol. I really think they should keep the comment sections. Especially the news websites.
 
Although I comment very rarely I almost always read the comments which, apart from the occasional troll, I generally find interesting and informative.
I certainly would not click through to MyBroadband news as regularly, if at all, if comments were disabled or if one had to click through to the forum to see them (I'd consider this an extreme waste of time)
 
Absolutely. Your own understanding after reading an article do not compare even close to how fellow readers perceive the article or any related comment posted.

My personal view is not to trust any article without a comment section. If anything in the article is suspect, this will be exposed very quickly in the comment section.

Lastly, a comment section makes you part and parcel of the community or forum. Many of us will read the article simply to view the comment section.
 
Comments sections can definitely add value, but it depends on the site and how it's implemented.
News24 should serve as a perfect example of a terribly-implemented comments system as well as the wrong type of site.
I reached out to the admins and asked why they chose such a lousy system (log in via FB) as it just created an environment where almost everyone was using alias FB accounts which resulted in troll culture even worse than YouTube.
The other factor is that there are a LOT of very bitter expats who trawl that site daily looking for any bad news about SA to make them feel better about leaving and when the comments were still active they'd just dogpile it resulting in flamewar that showcased the worst of SA.
 
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