Notably and non-obviously, the 99 cents is a one-time fee, so once you've paid it you're entitled to make as many comments as you want.
But what sort of person is willing to pay to make comments on a local newspaper? My prediction: the comments section of the Attleboro Sun-Chronicle will henceforth be limited to a very small number of retired cranks with too much time on their hands and very large bees in their bonnet about something or other. Expect to see the same damn thread under every article as the four usual suspects duke it out over whether the problems of the world are all due to (a) George Bush, (b) Barack Obama, (c) the Federal Reserve or (d) the aliens.
Brevity magazine is thinking about charging $2 to $3 dollars to submit articles to its editors for consideration. It is a not-for-profit magazine.
I think this topic is similar to the post about a newspaper charging for comments.
Publishing is in crisis. I know many web types don't really worry too much about these inky-fingered paper dinosaurs, but it worries me. For whatever reasons, the web gurus of the late 90s told everyone to win eyeballs, and now we have free content, free comments and free submissions. Not even the price of postage is a barrier any more. We seem to be suffering now from an internet that is burdened by too many contributors, too much information, too much noise and not enough signal. And what the publishers will tell you, too few readers.
So perhaps a paywall will help to balance this out. In the past submitting a letter or an article or a book to a publisher was the "entry barrier" to participation. Now it is easier to do via a website or email and the price disguised within the ISP fee.
And if publishers do not charge for submission, how else do we reduce the overwhelming deluge of poor quality submissions?
That is no different from the comments on most local papers now.
I'm amazed that a company that wants to be taken as a professional source for journalism allows those kinds of comments on their site. It just looks terrible to their image and adds nothing to the story.
Comments are from "ordinary people", so why would anyone measure the quality of an article by the quality of the comments? Does an article become less true or less readable just because it is followed by some bad comments?
In contrast, not publishing comments would lead to the impression of being unable to take criticism.
By publishing even the dumbest comments, they show that they are able to handle criticism, and that they don't suppress anyone's opinion.
> and adds nothing to the story
Comments serve a completely different purpose. While the article reflects the facts, the comments reflect the sentiment of the people. That's what they add to the story.
In some rare cases comments even add some interesting facts.
Comments serve a completely different purpose. While the article reflects the facts, the comments reflect the sentiment of the people. That's what they add to the story
Except they don't reflect the sentiment of "the people", only the small subset with the time and inclination to comment. This usually winds up being folks with some kind of extreme opinion or other kind of bonnet-dwelling bee.
Actually, I think this is likely the best way to deal with trolls. Having someone input their credit card gets rid (at least in their mind) of the anonymity that trolls thrive on.
The majority of the anonymous-posting news sites I have visited have been filled with trollish, often misspelled comments (on a side note: I think there must be a direct relationship between how poor a speller one is and their political leanings..). The NYTimes is the only major news source where I have found the majority of the online comments to have been written in a legible manner.
If HN grows too big or unruly to manage, I fully expect pg to implement credit card registration as well...
Oh, it'll get rid of trolls alright. Trolls post stupid and insane comments which they don't really believe. Instead it'll just get filled up people who post stupid and insane comments which they really do believe. A victory for those whose job it is to police the comments, but not really a victory for sensible discourse.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: what I really want is a browser plugin which blocks comments. I never want to see another comment again, on any site. That'd be a pretty sweet internet.
the trick of the credit card/ one identity per user trick is that you must not only charge; that's just a way to make bans meaningful... you must also ban users who are not contributing.
The hard part is crafting a policy such that there is a clear way of dealing with earnest cranks (or people willing to be seen as earnest cranks.)
But even if you don't solve that problem, you can get rid of the obvious trolls by implementing some 'one identity per human' plus banning. Heck, if you raise the price of identities enough, you could make bans meaningful without limiting each person to only one identity (though, I suspect, in that case you have to charge more than a buck.)
MetaFilter has a similar system (their onetime fee is $5), and they're one of the most consistent, stable, noisefree online communities I've ever seen.
I think this will work out great for them. Somethingawful.com is one example of a site which has a pay-barrier to it's forums primarily for the reason to keeping out trolls. Now you may have mixed opinions over the nature of things discussed in the forums there, but the maturity of the discourse is pretty impressive for the size of the audience. The fact that so much of the topic matter is 'immature' only helps exemplify how effective the system is.
I hope you are joking. SomethingAwful is a troll-generating machine. They didn't make it premium to keep the troll out they made it premium to make it profitable.
Somethingawful has 100s of forums, all with wildly different rules. Some have virtually no rules, and are of course filled with trolls.
But of the forums meant for serious discussion, there is far less trolling than anywhere else on the internet. Not that many people are willing to pay $10 per troll comment- though they ban people very regularly.
There are forums and threads on SomethingAwful with fairly intelligent discourse. There are also threads and forums with "quality" trolling. Either way, the cost and the harsh moderation has definitely improved the quality of the site.
I predict that working out not-so-great with shared credit cards, which are an extraordinarily common financial arrangement in many American families. (Perhaps less so among twenty-something techies than the population at large -- I deal with many, many customers who on their husband's card.)
Worth mentioning: not everyone has a credit card. A requirement that you have to own a credit card will, in effect if not in design, essentially redline your service. Reasonable people can disagree about how much that matters, but I would predict that many newsrooms would go nuclear if you connected the dots for them on the inability of, e.g., 60% of blacks in Chicago from being barred from civic participation on $PICK_AN_ISSUE because they don't have a bank account. (There are prepaid cards to circumvent that restriction. Of course, the riffraff who are the intended targets of the policy are also capable of buying prepaid cards.)
The last time I researched the issue the government quoted the national number at 20%. It skews higher for minorities and low-income people. You're welcome to your intuitions -- it might only be 40%. Either way, it isn't a small number or one which is evenly distributed across all demographics.
Ever been to Chicago? There's a check-cashing shop (they call them "currency exchanges") on almost every block. If you are willing to pay whatever percentage they charge to cash your payroll check, you can get by without a bank account. WHY people do this I do not know, but large numbers do.
IntenseDebate or Disqus should go with this model and then let me relax commenting moderation on my blog for paid commenters. It could possibly save me a ton of moderating effort.
from what i understand of the credit card system, the name featured on the card is not checked at all -- at least that's the way it works with our Authorize.net install.
if this is true for everyone, that means that the person who decided to implement the system to "check your name" is in for a big surprise when they realize any name will work with a valid credit card.
AVS checks zip code and/or the number portion of your street address depending on how you interpret the response.
CVV2 check obviously works as intended. And our experience has been that when CVV2 is checked, sometimes the expiration date will be checked (although w/o CVV2 check expiration date is similarly meaningless).
I'm far from an expert here, so somebody else can probably clarify a bit more.
I wouldn't give a site my credit card just to comment, but I'd be ok with SMS verification. eg. Provide your mobile number when you sign up and they text you an unlock code before it works. Alternatively you could text them first to get the unlock code. The advantage of using SMS verification is it continues to allow anonymous comments, but it's non-trivial to create multiple accounts and losing karma/being banned would be effectively permanent.
You can't automatically retrieve someone's name with their cellphone/mobile number in the way you can with a credit card check, but admittedly it's not very hard. Removing the risk of being ripped off is the major benefit over a cc check.
I think this is a great idea, and I wish sfgate.com would do the same thing! As timmaah says, I, too, am amazed that newspapers allow comments on their stories, as it just devolves into left vs. right for almost every story on the site!
They should have made it the cost of a stamp and they would have won more favor. "Instead of buying a stamp, buy the right to post on our site and you will be able to write back to the author and editor immediately." Instead they are charging $0.99 (just to say it's under a dollar?) - basically asking someone for money that could be spent on more important things.
If every newspaper did this, would that not stifle free speech and lower the quality of democracy? Aren't the pirates primarley motivated to further freedom of information when they publish ways to overcome pay walls and such things.
I think the internet is loosing its way. This site has no pay wall, yet the quality of discussion is great. Maybe it is not anonymity but the general atmosphere which encourages trolling.
No. Free speech is guaranteed, but that does't mean a company has to support and promote your speech on its private platform.
Considering that commenting on stories is only a recent addition. Might be surprised to find out that it was kind of difficult to comment on stories to the public when it was an actual newsPAPER. =)
You still have letters to the editor. You still have options to create a blog and post your thoughts.
> This site has no pay wall, yet the quality of discussion is great.
Yet it can still get pretty heated at times, and the moderation is pretty heavy. Also, the audience it attracts is a certain mindset. Invite the same audience a newspaper gets and it will suddenly get less civil.
But what sort of person is willing to pay to make comments on a local newspaper? My prediction: the comments section of the Attleboro Sun-Chronicle will henceforth be limited to a very small number of retired cranks with too much time on their hands and very large bees in their bonnet about something or other. Expect to see the same damn thread under every article as the four usual suspects duke it out over whether the problems of the world are all due to (a) George Bush, (b) Barack Obama, (c) the Federal Reserve or (d) the aliens.