"Comments" Section on popular portals

[RX135]

First of all, this has nothing to do with automobiles, so I don't know if this is the right place to post.

@Mods, if you find it irrelevant, please delete the thread.

Coming back to the main subject, I casually stumbled across a Rediff article. The news item is fine, but the "comments" section that follows the article is horrible. There is open war of words with extremely low level comments, derogatory to various communities. People are pouring so much of hatred that after reading through some posts, I lost my senses and was tempted to take up a side.

Do we really need these "comments" sections, which are extremely loosely moderated? Isn't yellow journalism and TV/media sufficient to pollute minds of reader/viewers? What purpose do these sections serve other than inadvertently spreading hatred among reader?

I have seen such things many times on Rediff and Cricinfo (and few other portals). They neither provide any new knowledgeable perspective nor are representative of the society. There no meaningful discussion and no value addition for the reader.

I hope against hope that, some common sense will prevail some day and these so called "feedback" sections are done away forever.

[sajo]

I can already see many comments as being reported for abuse...

[Samurai]

They provide eye*****, which means AD revenue as people keep returning to continue beating the deadhorse...

A poster may come 10-15 times to see the reaction to his post or reply to others reply to his reply to others reply...so on and so forth. Everytime they can show different ADs and mint more money. Who cares about content of comments anyway.

[esteem_lover]

I think you are wrong here samurai. these sections are just a plce for people to vent their feelings , they never come back to see who has commented about what further. it is not like a forum where you know only the most interested people have views to offer. replying to one of those articles is pretty easy, not like in a forum where you have to register & confirm & login. A poster or a person who posts does not come to see what is the reaction to his post simply because 99.9% of the people who comment do not read the comments already made.
cheers

@rx135...never take anything seriously or at face value, make your own judgement. a lot of folks have different opinion on different things. Now. i dont like the palio, would you subscribe to that just because i made a detailed post about it ??

[GTO]

Do we really need these "comments" sections, which are extremely loosely moderated?

Yes and No. We do need them, but they need effective moderation. The comments section surely add value, and offer far more perspectives on the same topic. However, and as you have rightly pointed out, most of them end up in junk because there is no moderation whatsoever.

Some news websites / blogs (especially the truthaboutcars.com) have well-moderated comments sections. And here.....the user comments make for better reading than the actual article itself. Check an example here : Linky. The user feedback is awesome to read.

[typeOnegative]

Agree with RX as far as rediff goes. But yes, comments can add value to discussions/articles. Maybe even other points of view. The best comments section? IMHO that's with BBC. As GTO said, moderation (verb) is the key.

[benbsb29]

BSMotoring also has a comments section on their website, but that is moderated, and appears only once approved. Moderation is absolutely essential to add/maintain quality in discussion.

[supremeBaleno]

Originally Posted by RX135

People are pouring so much of hatred that after reading through some posts, I lost my senses and was tempted to take up a side.

Reading the stuff on that link only tempted me to just get the hell out of there.