NPR to close website's comments section

[yallerdawg]

The Hill, by Joe Concha

"In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters," Montgomery wrote. "That’s 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016."

Jensen also concluded that NPR's commenting system "is serving a very, very small slice of its overall audience."

The Guardian, The Daily Beast and The Verge have all closed their comment sections relatively recently, with the Guardian citing “unacceptable levels of toxic commentary.”

The Huffington Post requires its users "to verify their identities by linking to a verified Facebook account," in order to "allow people to express their ideas in a civil and responsible manner."

http://thehill.com/media/292024-npr-to-close-websites-comments-section

[Hekate]

1. Wise decision. As we all know by now, trolls completely take over when there are no mods....

....or their equivalent.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. yep. racist, sexist, homophobic pigs dominate the comment sections

[Buckeye_Democrat]

7. Yep. The drive away more reasonable people with their insanity...

... when uncontrolled.

[Initech]

17. Just read any comments section where the article mentions transgender people.

The transphobia in those comments sections are pretty horrifying.

[lpbk2713]

3. They could just filter out posts with certain words and phrases.

Like Benghazi or mail server.

It would probably cut their toxic mail dramatically.

[gto]

4. I wonder if

Wonder if YouTube will ever shut down their comment section or go the Facebook commenting route. Has to be the most horrific place on the web when it comes to comments.

[yallerdawg]

5. Didn't we stop reading comments years ago?

I didn't say stop "writing" comments - I always have the most interesting and enlightening things to say.

"My Posts" is one of the finest features at DU!

[ThoughtCriminal]

6. Did they reverse unique users and comments?

Shouldn't that be 491,000 users and 33 million comments? Otherwise that's a lot of non-commenting lurkers.

Don't get me started on Yahoo! comments. If God spent a day reading them, we would get nothing but locusts for the next 5000 years.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

8. LOL! Tell me about it.

Yahoo comments would lead many people to think that Trump has the support of about 80% of the population. There's been a few stories that seemed to have mostly liberal commenters, but they're few and far between.

[backscatter712]

9. Good move for them.

When it comes to comment sections, web sites need to either spend the time, trouble, and money to have real full-time moderators curating comments and booting the shitheads, or they shouldn't bother at all. Unmoderated comments sections end up full of Youtube style vitriol.

[yallerdawg]

10. NPR and other websites are pointing out...

"commenters" are a very tiny, tiny fraction of the website's users - they are unrepresentative of any kind of true public opinion.

We should all be aware of that.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

11. Things I like about NPR, unrelated to their website...

I do not like ANY defense of Trump; but I appreciate a media willing to defend Clinton and Trump on reasonable grounds. During the Republican Primaries, I couldn't stand National Public Radio. This problem with websites will spread. Paid RNC operatives and Trump-trolls want an end to free speech online, which will allow them to clean their candidate's image, by concealing Trump's perverse racism, toxic hate-mongering speeches and past, sexist activity, including rape.


The Trump nick-name Teflon Don will become increasingly appropriate as his media, criminal and civil slime oozes away, like water off of a duck's back. But, how can he change his natural expressions and racist personality in time for the election?

[yallerdawg]

12. We have to discern between fact and opinion.

Today's "news," websites, blogs have fact buried under opinion - and comment sections are endless opinion.

"Who, what, when, where" - facts.

"Why" - based on fact - can be newsworthy.

But it is up to each of us to recognize when "why" drifts into pure unsubstantiated opinion and assumption.

Of course, when that opinion matches our own, we tend to believe it is all fact.

[Orrex]

13. I heard that DU is closing its comments section, too.

[yallerdawg]

14. Only for particular "commenters."

DU is "moderated" for content - and the "commenters" actually create the content DU comments on.

[Orrex]

15. You don't say!

[yallerdawg]

16. "NPR is killing off comments. That’s great news."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/npr-is-killing-off-comments-thats-great-news/2016/08/21/766e3b60-67b2-11e6-8ca3-91c349029486_story.html

But I do hate the comments sections of media websites. Or, more accurately, I have grown to hate them.

When I started The Fix in 2006, I spent lots of time thinking about the comments section — and nurturing it. I would regularly go into the comments to interact (or try to interact) with readers. I incentivized and deputized regular commenters to keep order.

Then I gave up. Because none of the tactics or strategies we tried had any real effect on the quality of the dialogue happening on The Fix. No matter what the original post was about, a handful of the loudest — or most committed — voices in the room hijacked the comments thread to push their own agendas. Anyone trying to urge the conversation back to the topic at hand — or even something approximating the topic at hand — was shouted down and shamed.

It was the opposite of the community I was trying to build. Instead of providing a place where political junkies could trade thoughts, ideas and jokes about the political scene, the Fix comments section turned into a town in which the loudest and most obnoxious guy appoints himself mayor.