Posted on 12/26/2013 8:38:09 AM PST by DJ MacWoW
NEW YORK (AP) - Mix blatant bigotry with poor spelling. Add a dash of ALL CAPS. Top it off with a violent threat. And there you have it: A recipe for the worst of online comments, scourge of the Internet.
Blame anonymity, blame politicians, blame human nature. But a growing number of websites are reining in the Wild West of online commentary. Companies including Google and the Huffington Post are trying everything from deploying moderators to forcing people to use their real names in order to restore civil discourse. Some sites, such as Popular Science, are banning comments altogether.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
That’s him, he just changes his name and an hour later he’s back at it.
Does that apply to something that is printed in the Washington Times or something that was published by Edward Snowden?
ROFFMSS!!!
I have to laugh at the newspaper sites that restrict commentary to the contrary of articles and/or opinion pieces they print and leave open to public comment.
couple of year a go a paper I regularly commented on changed the policy for posting comments on anything that appeared on the editorial pages. You were required to become a "verified user" and use your real name, but you could still use whatever "screen name" you registered on anything else. I had no problem with becoming "verified" as I had always used my real name any way and happily kept posting up until last year when I got a notice that my account had been banned. They claimed they had received numerous complaints about my comments - they had to go back a full 18 months to come up a grand total of 5. I laughed as I was easily able to refute every claim of "rules violations, which I did in a return email, gave them a lit of 15 violations committed in the space of a week made by the UNverified complaining poster for which I had never made a complaint, even knowing it would not change the situation - I haven't purchased their rag or even gone to the website since.
If they don't care for my opinion, they don't need my money or assistance in their website ad revenue.
I upset their delicate sensibilities of Daily Mail on line, I’m official Banned.
Yahoo has always been stupid liberals. The only thing truly offensive to them is the truth backed by facts.
a lot of them are banning comments , censoring etc . because we are exposing that global warming is a hoax
I was kicked off a newspaper site for confronting their resident lib attorney poster with facts. He was so frosted that I’m not allowed on the site even to read obits. LOL!!!
Banned by the Mail? Considering their ‘standards’, that’s quite an accomplishment.
Good god. I cannot make it more clear. But ill try one last time. We all know about ownership, first amendment, etc.
We aren’t discussing the legalities of it. We are discussing whether it’s a wise business model to censor for rudeness, caps, and meanness, and whether it is usually done to prevent the peanut gallery from exposing lies and distortions from a news site.
And its hunky dory to debate whether or not popular science magazine should allow comments on their stories. We all know they have the right to not allow comments. We all really really reallllly get it that we could set up an alternative science magazine.
We are discussing WHY they pulled the plug on comments, the value of comments, and where a good publisher should or shouldn’t draw the line. Many here are of the opinion that it usually involves protecting leftist political positions and sacred cows.
That’s probably an honor. You clearly won the debate, all they could do was banish you.
What I’m trying to say - which you are not “getting” - is that owners of websites set things up according to their own objectives. In many cases, we may be talking about business objectives. Or it may be politicial objectives. And it can also be a combination of both.
NOW ... since they are going to set things up according to their OWN OBJECTIVES and not according to your objectives ... there is really nothing to gripe about.
What you seem to be wanting to say is that you want some of these owners to use YOUR OBJECTIVES in running THEIR WEBSITE. That idea sounds sort of ridiculous.
And note ... here I’m not talking about legal requirements, but simply a moral or persuasive issue.
The question of SHOULD a website owner listen to me and set up the running of his website according to MY OBJECTIVES because I say it’s right? The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT!
What’s the right methodology then? It’s to let the free market work as it’s supposed to and if people (in mass) don’t like it - then they no longer go to that website and it withers away.
And the other part of the answer is that you set up an alternative to the one you don’t like.
It does make it 'different' in dealing with comments and discussion. Of course those accounts are easily created and disguised.
It is interesting that when we protest in public, the use of the recognized individual stands out, as opposed to anonymity.
Think back to early Tea Party protests in town halls and such, the people were part of the community and their voices carried more weight because they were known.
As for any internet forum, it is property of the portal owner and subject to the whims and rules of such.
Here's what it's about right here. The global warming people were upset because the deniers were making too much sense and gaining ground so they banned all comments.
And now other leftist sites are realizing that this is going to happen across the web...conservatives making sense.
I’m going to add to this. What this is (that you describe) is actually an OPPOTUNITY for someone.
What someone can do is create a website in which they have FREE COMMENT on any article. Make it a “go to spot” on the Internet for commenting on ALL NEWS ARTICLES. There will be no restriction in comment except legal considerations and no personal attacks upon other posters.
It will take money and promotion, bit someone could make quote a business out of it.
THAT is how you tackle the problem under the US Constitution and the free market.
What we are talking about is using this excuse to ban any facts or truth deemed offensive. They are shutting down debate using a canard. The left will silence truth any way that they can.
Absolutely.
Yes , I agree
I posted a comment on this thread saying something similar.
we were exposing the global warming hoax
they want to enslave us with the global warming hoax and we were getting the word out about the truth and the news papers and science organizations can’t have that so they censor the comments
Their forums; their laws.
In the case of a website that's trying to maintain a degree of respectability, it's absolutely in their own interests to eliminate messages with insults, misspellings, abusive language, idiotic content, etc.
However, I do have one basic rule that I observe as a reader:
If I post a well-written message that is deleted solely because the owner/management of the website doesn't like the content, then I don't visit that website again -- ever.
If the website in question is an online version of a publication that has a printed edition, then I extend that to the printed edition as well.
What the owners of many websites overlook is that the content posted by readers is often more appealing to other readers than the original news stories are.
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