Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean is pondering comment policies:
So the question is: how can the comment sections be better? To decode this for our more innocent readers: how can we increase the signal-to-noise ratio? Increasing the signal is one obvious way, but that's hard. The real question that I've been wondering about (haven't consulted my co-bloggers on this) is: should we take more dramatic steps to decrease the noise? In particular, should we have a much heavier hand in discouraging, deleting, or even banning people who are rude, disruptive, off-topic, or just plain crackpotty? And in most specific particular: if we did so, are there folks out there who would judge the comment sections to be more useful, and might even be more likely to join in themselves?
Consensus in the comments there seems to be running in favor of some anti-crackpot moderation. I'll take this opportunity to basically re-iterate what I said over there, regarding my own comment policy, such as it is:
I'm something of a free-comment absolutist. My strong preference is to delete nothing but spam, and only intervene in cases where I feel that the line has really been crossed. There have been slightly more than 6200 comments posted here since the move to ScienceBlogs, and in that time, I believe I have only disemvowelled one comment.
I do not attempt to filter comments on the basis of viewpoint, partly for practical reasons-- I barely have time to read comments as they come in, let alone edit those I don't agree with-- but mostly out of principle. In my opinion, either you have comments open to all, or you might as well not have comments at all. In contrast to many of the statements at Cosmic Variance, I'm significantly less likely to read the comments at sites where I know that they moderate based on viewpoint, and I'll post responses here rather than posting comments at any such sites.
I also don't have a major problem with people posting crackpot comments, again, unlike the Cosmic Variance gang. I suspect this goes back to a difference of opinion about the purpose of the whole blogging enterprise-- the commenters there talk about the crackpots as distracting from the discussions among experts, where I view this site more as public outreach than a forum for experts to talk. I figure professional scientists have plenty of places where they can talk to each other, on the Web and off, but there aren't as many outlets for discussions pitched to the laity. I make an effort to always keep the physics posts at the most basic level I can manage, and any expert discussion that happens in the comments is a nice bonus, not the primary purpose of the site.
(The primary purpose of the site, by the way, is to amuse me. I do this because I enjoy it.)
If the science posts here attract the occasional crackpot comment, so be it. Granted, I'm not drawing a tenth of the comment traffic Cosmic Variance is, so it's possible that I might change my mind if I suddenly had an order of magnitude more kookery to deal with, but I doubt it.
(I wish I had an order of magnitude more comment traffice, but c'est la vie. I don't really have the time to respond to the comments I do get, which is probably why I don't get more...)
- Log in to post comments
I share your idea of the purpose of this being public outreach.
The problem is that the crackpottery at CV can get out of hand.
I have banned one crackpot from my blog comments, after he basically took over a comment thread with both much volume, much crackpottery, and much rudeness. Otherwise, it's not such a big deal.
At CV, the crackpots can feed upon each other. What's more, if the CV people don't have the time and energy to be vigilant and answer folks' questions, it's easy for the general public to come away with the impression that the crackpots may know what they're talking about. That would undermine the public outreach component of the blog.
On the other hand, such a policy could get a bit too much. I do remember one person over at CV asking some question about zero-point energy and why physicists are so adament that it can't be done. Many physicists would ignore that question as one that's fuelled by crackpots and that they're tired of hearing nutty theories about. I answered it, and the person who asked it thanked me there. So, there is some place for bringing up crackpot canards.
-Rob
(The primary purpose of the site, by the way, is to amuse me. I do this because I enjoy it.)
Excellent.
You don't have to ban crackpots, because you only have like one persistent nutball in your comments. But have you ever tried to read the comments on Kevin Drum's site? Massive, heavy-handed moderation is the only thing that could even begin to make that place sane again, as it's in the late stages of Greshamization now.
If there are more than a couple of crackpot comments, I usually don't read the comments at all. This is the one great advantage usenet has over blogs, is the power to killfile.
You don't have to ban crackpots, because you only have like one persistent nutball in your comments. But have you ever tried to read the comments on Kevin Drum's site? Massive, heavy-handed moderation is the only thing that could even begin to make that place sane again, as it's in the late stages of Greshamization now.
True enough, the comments at Calpundit Monthly are a sewer. I think that has more to do with the fact that it's primarily a political site than just the lack of moderation, though. Even otherwise very good sites devolve badly when the comments get political-- I've pretty much given up on reading the comments to political posts on Making Light.
If I had multiple crackpots posting, I might consider disemvowelling them as a warning to others. It'd take a lot to get me to start deleting comments wholesale, though.
This is the one great advantage usenet has over blogs, is the power to killfile.
Amen.
I think my Usenet background is responsible for a lot of what I think about the whole issue of comments on weblogs.
One idea that occurred to me is to let the blog author rate comments in some way (as spam, or crackpotish or trollish, whatever), and then let the readers decide if they care to see those comments or not.
But filtration is probably unnecessary unless you're regularly getting 10s of comments per post.
For most blogs, an average of 100 or more comments per post means that the comment section has degraded into unreadability. Depending on the original audience and topic of the blog, of course... some blogs hit this point at 50 or even less.
One of the very few exceptions to this rule is Making Light. I've noticed that Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden are very quick to step in to calm people down, and they are *ruthless* about disemvoweling trolls. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the secret sauce is, but clearly they are doing something right.
"I wish I had an order of magnitude more comment traffic"
Is this true? I read your blog regularly, but I rarely comment. Would you really welcome more comments? Even from people who don't have their own blog/are not physicists?
Is this true? I read your blog regularly, but I rarely comment. Would you really welcome more comments? Even from people who don't have their own blog/are not physicists?
Yeah.
For one thing, the commenter fraction seems to be fairly constant across blogs, so more commenters most likely would mean more readers.
More importantly, moreactive comment sections can become sort of self-sustaining, and reduce the pressure to keep coming up with interesting new material to post to keep people coming back.
But the most important factor is that I like getting feedback from other people. Without comments, I occasionally feel like I'm shouting into the void, here. I don't particularly care who the commenters are-- though if a bunch of Nobel laureates were to start leaving comments saying "Nice job!", I'd be stoked-- it's just nice to hear from other people.
In general, I'm with you. One difference is that I tend to remove baseless comments or ad-hominem attacks. If a commenter can't be bothered to read the other comments or the post he/she is responding to, I don't think he/she deserves to be heard. I don't get many ad-hominem attacks, but again, I don't feel they contribute in any way to the conversation, so I delete them.
Also, I delete self-promoting wackos. This isn't necessarily the same thing as spam, because there typically appears to be a human behind them, but if all they're doing is hyping their personal site (generally selling something), without adding to the conversation, then I delete them.
If someone makes an ad-hominem attack in the context of making a relevant point, I usually caution them about the attack, but let the comment stand.