One site owner's view on comments

http://pando.com/2014/08/19/comment-sections-are-on-their-way-out/

Authored by: Bryan Goldberg.

Bryan is an entrepreneur in New York and San Francisco. He is the Founder and CEO of Bustle.com. He previously founded Bleacher Report, and currently advises several startups.

Major achievements, but it does not mean that he's correct on commenting systems.

No one method exists for managing user-contributed comments, especially with comments.

I have no problem with sites that prohibit comments. Nothing exists that says sites must permit user-contributed comment. It's a big web. Users can comment by other means, like with their own blog sites.

I take some exceptions with Bryan's views about comments.

... time has shown that comment sections often create a negative space and provide a negative experience — to the reader, the writer, and to the publisher.

Incorrect. Comment sections provide the experience mentioned above if a site owner permits it. You reap what you invest into the site. Like Anil Dash said, if your site has assholes, it's the site owner's fault. Quit blaming comments or user-contributed content. It's a lazy, unimaginative excuse.

If you don't want to permit comments, then simply say that managing comments in way that we like takes too much innovation and time, and we feel that energy is best used on other aspects of our site. Twitter can be the web's message board.

Because several others writers have discussed the issue of comment abuse and bullying in great detail, I won’t elaborate on this primary reason for avoiding them.

Again, it's the site-owner's fault. The blame does not go to the trolls because that's all they know. Site owners need to take more responsibility. Disabling comments is certainly a viable solution, but commenting systems don't receive the blame.

Both the ongoing struggles at Gawker, and the stunning attacks on Zelda Williams serve as heart-wrenching pictures of trolling.

The latter has to do with Twitter, which is a completely different animal, in my opinion. You cannot lump Twitter's functionality in with message boards or the comment sections in blogs and newspaper sites.

Simply stated — the real estate traditionally devoted to comments is too valuable to be wasted on a component that adds minimal value. This slot is typically found directly below an article’s body text and, on Bustle, it is now used primarily for “related content”.

Well who said that comments must be displayed on the same page as the article content? Not that I expect comments (WebMentions) here at JotHut, but replies to an article will appear on a separate page. At the bottom of an article is a link to the replies, and the link shows the count of replies. A user must click the link to see the comments. What's difficult about implementing that?

The shift to hosting “related content” underneath an article has taken place over a two or three year period of time, and it was catalyzed by two major events — both of which were advanced by companies like Outbrian and Taboola.

Uh, what? I implemented the related content links at the bottom of a ToledoTalk.com thread post when I created the Parula code back in 2005. The related content is based upon similar tags in the thread posts at Toledo Talk. I found the code on the web. It's hardly a new concept.

I use the same related content idea at JotHut in my Junco code and in my Grebe blogging tool. Except the articles under related content are articles within the site. They are not external articles.

I think Outbrain and Taboola show that crap at the bottom of articles that I see on many websites. Talk about a waste of web page real estate. It looks tacky, hacky, amateurish.

http://fortune.com/2014/08/18/taboola-outbrain-battle-bad-reputation-each-other/

Outbrain and Taboola’s founders set out to make the Internet a better place. So why does everyone seem to hate their products?

Outbrain-style content recommendation widgets are now ubiquitous on the Web. Since 2006, the New York-based company has grown to 400 employees with $99 million in venture backing. Outbrain makes 180 billion recommendations each month to an audience of 550 million people.

Taboola has quickly gained on Outbrain’s early lead in the market. It now reaches 400 million monthly unique visitors and serves 1.5 billion recommendations each day.

Publishers can earn sizable chunks of revenue from the use of these services. Advertisers (which sometimes include other publishers) who wish to recommend their content can pay to promote links; the revenue gets split with the publishers. The services pay publishers anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions of dollars per year. As banner ads fall further out of favor, publishers are eager for any kind of income they can get.

Despite their founders’ best intentions, many believe Outbrain and Taboola have made the Internet worse for the wear. It’s easy to see why. The links in their “related content” widgets, which typically appear at the bottom of a blog post or news article, often represent the worst of the Web.

Examples of recent headlines include “15 Good Looking Celebrities who destroyed themselves with plastic surgery,” which appeared on CNN.com and led to a site called SheBudgets, “Dog Tells Cat To Get Off His Bed, Hilarity Ensues,” which appeared on a story about murder on CBSNews.com and led to TheBarkPost.com, and “Seven causes of low testosterone,” which appeared on USAToday.com and led to a website called HealthCentral.

Last year, the digital media publication Digiday declared that “content marketing has a quality problem,” arguing that the new format is worse than the lowly banner ad — it’s spam.

Indeed, recent Tweets on the matter are almost universally negative.

The most notable expression of annoyance came from Marc Andreessen, the prominent venture capitalist, who also happens to have invested in digital publications such as Business Insider and PandoDaily. Any serious publishers “should be shot” for using related content links, he wrote, because they degrade the user experience and the advertiser experience.

They are a “part of the ‘race to the bottom’ pervading Internet content,” he added, noting that the income they bring in is a short-term substitute for building a long-term quality business.

Recapping: Bryan Goldberg said:

... comment sections often create a negative space and provide a negative experience ...

... the real estate traditionally devoted to comments is too valuable to be wasted on a component that adds minimal value. This slot is typically found directly below an article’s body text and, on Bustle, it is now used primarily for “related content”.

Bryan seems to support the idea of services like those offered by Outbrain and Taboola. But:

... many believe Outbrain and Taboola have made the Internet worse for the wear.

... their “related content” widgets often represent the worst of the Web.

Back to Bryan's Pando.com article:

Last week, I spoke to an executive at a popular website who told me that her average page views per visit increased from 1.3 to 2.2 over six weeks with the help of Outbrain. That additional page view per visit could generate massive revenue for her site.

So that site owner caved to the "worst of the Web" in order to increase page views, which increases revenue.

Sort of like what happens when media sites permit comments, even Facebook comments. Those sites want the page views.

In many cases, websites use Outbrain and Taboola to both buy and sell traffic. How does this make sense? Well, it has to do with inventory levels. It’s nothing more than an inter-site efficiency operation.

Again, it appears that Bryan likes the services of Outbrain and Taboola. According to Andreessen, Bryan supports spam and the degradation of the user experience. Bryan supports the worst of the web.

Bryan objects to one form of the worst of the web, comment sections, while endorsing another form of the worst of the web, which is outsourced related content bilge. I never click those links because I know the content is worthless.

Bryan wrote:

Those who create great content are just as happy to let the discussion happen elsewhere — Twitter and Facebook for the most part. This doesn’t just enhance the publisher’s focus on what they do best, it also drives meaningful traffic when Tweeters link back to the article in the context of discussion.

So now Bryan likes Twitter. Earlier he wrote:

Both the ongoing struggles at Gawker, and the stunning attacks on Zelda Williams serve as heart-wrenching pictures of trolling.

The link that was included with the word "attacks" points to an LA Times story about Zelda Williams getting attacked on Twitter. From that story:

Thousands on social media have expressed outrage and offered support to the daughter of the late actor Robin Williams after she announced this week that she was quitting social media after receiving "cruel and unnecessary" comments on her public profiles.

Much of the outrage has been directed at two Twitter users who posted fake photographs of the actor's body with bruises around his neck on Zelda Williams' Twitter and Instagram accounts. Some even blamed her for his death.

The so-called "troll" comments posted to Zelda Williams' social media accounts in the days after her father's death prompted calls to permanently remove the users from Twitter, whose accounts have since been suspended.

It's hard to follow Bryan's thought process. He dislikes commenting systems because of the trolling behavior for which he includes Twitter, but later in his article, he touts the positives of outsourcing commentary to the social media sites like Twitter that contain the trolling behavior.

Back to Bryan's Pando.com article:

So why do sites still allow comments? The answer — which is sadly prevalent in every aspect of publishing — is the least satisfying of all: tradition.

Tradition? Uh, no. The obvious answer is page views, which hopefully leads to more revenue. It's the same reason media sites also include the related content crap from Outbrain and Taboola.

Bryan wrote:

If a reader disagrees with an article or wants to add their opinion to it, they may do so on Twitter, on Facebook, on other platforms, or in real life.

Right, social media where the trolls also live.

A year ago, people mocked our decision to avoid comment threads. Our refusal to provide a comment section was heavily attacked by tweeters and commenters (on other sites).

I have no problem with disallowing comments. People can respond on their own web spaces.

If comment threads go the way of popup ads, I think we can all live with that.

And go the way of related content spam that degrades the user experience and represents the worst of the web, right?

I think MetaFilter.com implemented a decent barrier to its commenting system many years ago by requiring new user accounts to pay $1.

In January 2003, I launched my small, local message board called http://toledotalk.com and since then, I've used multiple methods or barriers for allowing new users to contribute content.

In the summer of 2010, I settled on a system that has worked the best.

To post a comment at Toledo Talk

• create an account (pseudonyms are permitted)
• provide a valid e-mail address
• click the account activation link contained in the email
• wait 48 hours to post a comment and 72 hours to start a new thread

New users can login, but they cannot post content until their account has existed for at least 48 hours.

This had greatly reduced the flamers, trolls, spammers, and the drive-by-one-commenters.

If quality comments are desired, then a person who wishes to be a part of the community will have no problem waiting the 48 hours.

If a site simply wants to be a one-way publishing source, then user-contributed content should be prohibited, and that's fine.

If the site wishes to generate a community on its site and not on social media sites, then the site must accept user-contributed content.

It's up to the site owner to be innovative, creative, and dedicated, regarding quality user-contributed content.

By the way, when I enable JavaScript and visit the local daily newspaper's website, such as this article, which contains the following opening sentence:

The University of Toledo Medical Center is unveiling a new high-tech machine today that kills cancer cells without surgery.

http://www.toledoblade.com/Medical/2014/08/21/UTMC-to-unveil-new-radiation-technology.html

the following info exists underneath that article:

Another reason why I surf the web more and more with JavaScript disabled.

From a view-source of that page, here's part of the code used to display that content spam:

script type="text/javascript" src="http://api.content.ad/Scripts/widget.js?' + qs + '"

I have no idea if api.content.ad is associated with Outbrain or Taboola, or if it's a similar service.

But it looks infantile and smacks of desperation for the publisher when that kind of content is included at the bottom of an article about new technology that will be used at a local hospital to fight cancer.

https://www.content.ad

Leading the Way in Content Monetization

Content.ad distributes high-paying premium content that doesn't look or feel like advertising and delivers engaged visitors to websites.

Really?

And here is how Bustle.com appears to me in my normal web-surfing mode:

#comments - #media - #moronism