The Netflow

Comments, comments, everywhere

As an internet user, I often think that maybe I’m not doing it right.

Let me explain a little: When I browse around the internet I rarely click on any ads unless they really appeal to me, I don’t really do the social networking thing(apart from twitter), and I never say anything to someone online that I wouldn’t say to their face. I was also taught as a child that “It’s better to be thought a fool, then to open your mouth and prove it”. So I really only comment on things that I understand and have an interest in. But I’m starting to think that its just me.

Go to any really mainstream site that people comment on – YouTube or The Boston Globe for example and take a look at the comments on some of the articles (The LHC Gallery is just one hilarious example). What is wrong with these people? Abusing each other and talking rubbish about a subject that they have seemingly no understanding of. In that example about the Large Hadron Collider on the Boston Globe Site, there are 4200 comments and after a brief read, I’ll take a stab in the dark and say 95% of these have no material value at all. They don’t add anything to the debate about the device or help anyone else to understand it.

I am by no means against people having an opinion or wanting to talk about it. I merely want people (probably naivety on my part) to think about what they are going to write first and decide if they really want to comment. I think that people should use a three step process before deciding to comment.

1. Decide if they really want to comment.
2. They should also question whether where they are writing it is really the best place to be adding their opinion.
3. Then, if after passing that step, they should endeavor to write their comment thoughtfully and in a way that everyone can understand.

Hopefully I can elaborate a little on each of the above points…

Decision Time

Comments follow you around. They are nearly always permanent little insights into the type of person you are. And, in the real world, can sometimes come back to kick you. So much so that certain organizations and companies want to know your “handles” and nicknames and the various forums that you browse. The White House is one extreme example where as part of the application process for they ask for almost every internet posting you’ve ever made… but that’s in the extreme case. You have to think before you post as your comments may have consequences that you just can’t foresee.

Appropriate forum

Is the Boston Globe website really the best place to learn or talk about the LHC? Will any people who have any say in the matter be able to read or respond to your concerns? Nobody is going to read through 4000 comments. Are you just posting it for the hell of it or do you want someone to take note? Then post it in an appropriate place! If you don’t want tax money used for a certain process, there is little point in writing about it in the wrong place. And it’s not just this example. People the world over complain about things online where nothing is going to be done rather than write to their local representative or appropriate person where something might be done!

Give me grammar and punctuation!

I understand that for a lot of people that comment on the Internet, English is not their first language. And I appreciate the effort that they all put in to try and post in the language that I understand best. However, I have often been stumped on the web by English speakers that have written unbelievably badly written posts/comments. As a commenter or author it is your job to get your point across as well as you can. This means reaching the biggest audience possible without them having to decrypt what you mean from what you’ve written. I think everyone can ignore mistakes, because we all make them. Missing an apostrophe here or a comma there isn’t going to make your post unreadable. However, writing the entire post in caps and with no full stops or punctuation except for exclamation marks makes little sense and importantly, will make a lot of people discount you without even reading your point.

So what can we do? If people can’t do the whole self moderation thing do we introduce a BBC type moderation on every comment on these sites? Is that even possible on many of these huge sites? Its certainly true that comments will start to have little value unless something is done.

Edit 17/3/2009 Well, I can’t say I didn’t bring it on myself. This post unfortunately gets about 500 spam comments a day. and while Akismet catches nearly all of them, every couple of days I have to go through a few pages of spam to delete them all. And as much as I love the keyboard shortcuts in Wordpress 2.7 and how easy it is to go through the spam, I’m closing the comments on this post in an effort to stem the tide.

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Tags: Boston Globe, Comments, Decision Time, Fool, Insights, Internet User, Material Value, Rubbish, Social Networking, Twitter, Youtube