Stonemason
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Question of the Day: Which is the most hair-raising South African mountain pass you've driven?
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My comment was aimed at @MightyQuin who always highlights how poor MyBroadband and other publications are.
Entertainment and kak-praat have always been part of forums and comments, and are welcomed
We base our opinion on traffic measurements of numerous publications before and after they have closed comments (including News24 and IOL). It showed that it had no impact on traffic, and in some cases may be positive.
TheMightyQuin
Not amused...
wizardofid
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My comment was aimed at @MightyQuin who always highlights how poor MyBroadband and other publications are.
Entertainment and kak-praat have always been part of forums and comments, and are welcomed
However at forefront is freedom of speech which is a double ede sword, in my personal opinion mybb doesn't deal well and quick enough with things like hate speech and trolls harshly, news sections since the lockdown has been over run by, trolls, racist remarks and hate speech.
It is so bad currently I completely avoid the covid news section entirely and haven't posted in that news section in several weeks as a direct result.Same applies to IT and current news only reading select stuff unrelated to the lockdown or which might attract the aforementioned crowd.
Comments on or off ?. If you have some one to monitor it which isn't always possible, and when action is taken it usually 50 comments too late and damage is done.
TheMightyQuin
Not amused...
My comment was aimed at @MightyQuin who always highlights how poor MyBroadband and other publications are.
Entertainment and kak-praat have always been part of forums and comments, and are welcomed
I call it how I see it. 99% of the time I comment on the clickbait nature of article headlines.
TheMightyQuin
Not amused...
Where and when? I read this forum daily and am on it 8h a day. I have yet to see racist remarks or hate speech...the real stuff by the way, not the perceived, "I want to see it" stuff.
Hate speech and racism is not defined by YOUR level of sensitivity, it's defined by facts.
konfab
Honorary Master
Fantastic if you don't have an ethical problem if you make a mistake.
wizardofid
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Really should I remind you of the user who eventually after making close to 51 posts on a new account before he finally got booted with racist remarks towards whites in general, in that illegal property occupation thread, was that based on my level or what I see as racist. ???
Secondly now you running your mouth off and being a complete and utter donkey and arguing whether or not my opinion about if racist remarks, hate speech and trolling even takes place because it has to be based on facts.
Dude wt actual f, Karen ?
pinball wizard
Honorary Master
No, what we do is read the headline and excerpt of the article posted here and tear into it. What we do not do is click on the article to read it.What confuse us is why people continue to read the articles and visit the publication if they think it is so poor. The solution is easier than you think – just do not visit the site
TheMightyQuin
Not amused...
And there we have it...the typical kneejerk when someone does not agree with your statements. You mention one example and suddenly your sweeping statements are vindicated completely?
And to add spice, you throw in a personal attack just for the hell of it, because that and shouting, is how you "win" arguments.
But then it is luckily underscored by this completely irrational comment, so I shouldn't actually waste my time any further:
The only thing that really matters in life, are the part in bold, but our whole world is currently purely based on feelings.
Laughable...
rietrot
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Many come just to say how poor the article is.What confuse us is why people continue to read the articles and visit the publication if they think it is so poor. The solution is easier than you think – just do not visit the site
It high paced news with little substance solely aimed at getting clicks, is it not? More entertainment that information.
This is what you want.
It isn't masterful works of investigative journalism.
Even the product reviews and stuff is very superficial. So that you can have a couple each day, for the clicks.
If you wrote something proper and comprehensive you'll be done with that topic for a few months.
wizardofid
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Herr der Verboten
Honorary Master
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TheMightyQuin
Not amused...
Obvious to you, yes. I'm surprised you can type through all the tears....
Johnatan56
Honorary Master
Note how all 4 points have the same thing in common, that the article is poor which reflects on the journalist for writing and the publication for allowing it to be published, and I do call you out on that and usually say why it is poor quality.
If I can lift all the points of the article out within one short paragraph with none of the rest of the article doing anything to flesh it out/discuss, or the article doesn't answer the question it poses with the title, or the title is invalid compared to the article, it all shows poor quality journalism.
The main reason you probably get as much traffic as you do is because people come back for the forum, and because people find generally helpful stuff on the forum, they'll follow the site. No matter the content you post, it will probably get clicks due to the habit of people to visit MyBB, over time you will lose it if any other competitor actually existed.
The issue has more to do with articles being maybe 5 minutes of research, e.g. your company opinion one, that's a case of 4 questions and then sending it out and compiling the answer only from what the companies gave you.
This is the first heading and paragraph of the American Press institute's elements of journalism:
The next paragraphs:Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth
Good decision-making depends on people having reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context. Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but in a capacity that is more down to earth.
The elements of journalism - American Press Institute
In their book The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel identify the essential principles and practices of journalism. Here are 10 elements common to good journalism, drawn from the book. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth Good decision-making depends on people having...www.americanpressinstitute.org
You're just regurgitating information, not actually doing any real form of journalism.
That is most definitely wrong, comments definitely drive repeat traffic as people will go to the same news source again if they feel connected to it, via e.g. comments.
News24 and EWN succeeding despite not having comments has more to do with them being on the forefront of news, which makes up for it as people repost the links in other places they can discuss it.
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It very much depends on the site.
Daily Maverick back when they had open commenting had one or two commenters that were routinely better to read than the actual article. They'd give the tl;dr and also the opposing argument, corrections on basic points, etc. My feeling is DM has always been sensitive about comments less because of the abuse, and more because the journos would get upstaged by their own readers. Now commenting is a privilege of paying subscribers only, and all you get is insipid and sycophantic approval, and it's worse than nothing imo.
But it's a tricky one. Very few people have anything useful to contribute and the signal-to-noise ratio is hard to control on any reasonably general publication without a system for simply silencing the dumber members of the audience. If you're positioned at the mass market then the comments will tend to reflect the population mean IQ, and the sheer degeneracy will be truly frightening. Think News24 followed closely by EWN. The more niche you are the longer your comment section will survive entropy, but then you have other problems. Reason.com has pretty great comments and apparently needs no moderation... but they have no ad money either.
I'd like to see a technical solution. A federated Disqus-like platform should surely be able to do a globally-namespaced reputation-driven ranking/rights system. Think PageRank or Stackexchange.
Problem then might be that all publishers get like DM: not so keen to have only those comments that make their journos feel legitimately silly.
Daily Maverick back when they had open commenting had one or two commenters that were routinely better to read than the actual article. They'd give the tl;dr and also the opposing argument, corrections on basic points, etc. My feeling is DM has always been sensitive about comments less because of the abuse, and more because the journos would get upstaged by their own readers. Now commenting is a privilege of paying subscribers only, and all you get is insipid and sycophantic approval, and it's worse than nothing imo.
But it's a tricky one. Very few people have anything useful to contribute and the signal-to-noise ratio is hard to control on any reasonably general publication without a system for simply silencing the dumber members of the audience. If you're positioned at the mass market then the comments will tend to reflect the population mean IQ, and the sheer degeneracy will be truly frightening. Think News24 followed closely by EWN. The more niche you are the longer your comment section will survive entropy, but then you have other problems. Reason.com has pretty great comments and apparently needs no moderation... but they have no ad money either.
I'd like to see a technical solution. A federated Disqus-like platform should surely be able to do a globally-namespaced reputation-driven ranking/rights system. Think PageRank or Stackexchange.
Problem then might be that all publishers get like DM: not so keen to have only those comments that make their journos feel legitimately silly.
TEXTILE GUY
Honorary Master
It's also become a pain in the whatsis with disqus logging you out every so often then wanting you to log back in with a password *and* some unfathomable captcha puzzle.