A Policy Question: Comments

As most of you know, we pride ourselves here on being a top-down blog. We’re not one of those touchy-feely people-powered sites that are all “What would you like me to post about?” and “Whatever can we do to serve you?” Our attitude is, we know what’s best for you, and we’re taking time from our busy schedules to provide it, and you’ll like it or learn to. At Cosmic Variance, that’s just how we roll.

There is, however, an obvious exception to the rule: the comment sections. (Or should that be “are, however, obvious exceptions”? Grammar is not how we roll.) That’s where the people, our beloved readers, can let their voices be heard. A Habermasian zone of free communication, where all are welcome to participate in reasoned and passionate dialogue concerning the nature of the universe and our place within it. Okay, I’ll stop there.

So the question is: how can the comment sections be better? To decode this for our more innocent readers: how can we increase the signal-to-noise ratio? Increasing the signal is one obvious way, but that’s hard. The real question that I’ve been wondering about (haven’t consulted my co-bloggers on this) is: should we take more dramatic steps to decrease the noise? In particular, should we have a much heavier hand in discouraging, deleting, or even banning people who are rude, disruptive, off-topic, or just plain crackpotty? And in most specific particular: if we did so, are there folks out there who would judge the comment sections to be more useful, and might even be more likely to join in themselves?

Personally, I rarely read the comment sections on other blogs, even my absolute favorites. But I enjoy our comment threads here, and we certainly have some insightful and articulate commenters. Sadly, there are also the crackpots. To be absolutely clear, I am not referring to folks who are not experts in science or whatever else we happen to be talking about, but would sincerely like to join in the conversation, add an outsider’s perspective or ask a question or two. We like those comments, in fact those are our absolute favorites! Indeed, those are the ones that I most worry are being squeezed out by the noise. Likewise, we’re very happy to see comments that represent strong but principled disagreement with what we are saying. (We’ve been accused, unsurprisingly, of taking delight in stifing dissent, but the briefest glance at any of our controversial threads makes that a difficult position to support.)

The crackpots to whom I refer are those who know little or nothing about the subject but are convinced that they do, and are likewise convinced that the world needs to know about their theories, yet have absolutely no interest in listening to what others have to say. You know of whom I speak: the guy who has read the first chapter of The Elegant Universe and come away convinced that he knows more about how spacetime really works than these groupthinking string theorists, or the gal who constructed a model from ordinary household appliances that predicts the masses of all the particles in the Standard Model. (Neither of these examples refers to actual people, at least not to my knowledge; but I wouldn’t be surprised.)

So, do people prefer to let a thousand flowers bloom, even if some are indistinguishable from weeds, or should we play a more active role in deleting the nonsense? We’ve always been willing to delete/ban people who are repeatedly obnoxious, but it’s never fun to do so. We recognize that the free-speech zone that everyone is in favor of is not each individual blog, but rather the blogosphere as a whole. If anyone wants to push their own crazy theories about the birth of the universe, they should feel free to start a free blog and explain away to their heart’s content; we’re very happy to accept trackbacks to nearly any blog.

But individual blog comment sections aren’t public squares; they are more analogous to private living rooms. The preeminent statement of this philosophy was offered by Eugene Volokh, when he explains that comment threads are like cocktail parties to which the blog owners have invited you. It’s not supposed to be a free-for-all fracas in which rudeness and craziness must stoically be tolerated; it’s supposed to be an interesting mix of viewpoints from a wide variety of backgrounds, but one that comes together in mutual respect to create a stimulating dialogue.

And yet… and yet we almost always err on the side of letting people ramble on, at least until they become so impolite and/or disruptive that we have little choice. So what do you think? Would this blog be a better place if the Heavy Hand of the State slapped down some of the noisier contributors, or is the chaos part of the charm? (Responses from people who don’t usually comment are especially welcome.)

122 Comments

122 thoughts on “A Policy Question: Comments”

  1. Interesting comments here about blog habits. Apart from Atrios’s Eschaton where I never read the comments, I don’t read any blog if the comments aren’t also worth reading.

    The only useful rules that I can suggest are for blog commenters. One is that if one finds one is repeating oneself, stop. Another is, learn whom to stop responding to. Another is, the world would be a much duller place without irreconcilable differences.

  2. I think it is absolutely right that we should arrive at a policy that satisfies the most readers, while not creating any more work for ourselves, and I expect that’s what will come out of this.

    From my personal perspective, I don’t feel that we have a problem with rudeness. While there is obvious subjectivity in identifying it, I am pretty comfortable with our thresholds as they stand. However, I do feel that the crackpots derail the discussions somehow, and from discussions with some physicists who lurk on the site but don’t comment, I do think crackpots play some role in deterring them from commenting.

    Some commenters above have mentioned that physicists’ responses to the crackpots can be useful, either in merely setting the record straight, or by providing a record of such a response that can be referred to elsewhere. I can see this point, but I know that I, and most other physicists here, basically ignore true crackpots, and don’t respond at all, and I don’t think that will change. Given that, I do think they basically raise the noise and contribute little else, and would favor us exerting a little more editorial control. Again though, that’s just me, and I do think we should be guided by the consensus of the (non-crackpot) comments.

  3. Who shall protect “my character” if the moderators can’t, or won’t? 🙂

    “I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered.”Harold Scott Macdonald (H. S. M.) Coxeter

    Heisenberg and Hooft?

    It was a “simple lesson” for most of those who started off in science?

    Yet have we seen where this thinking took us? To think, anyone who would have provided the evidence for how “such thinking” was developed in science, might have been assigned to that “extra dimensional” thinking? Computer images of Banchoff?

    Labeled and branded a crackpot? Oh well:)

  4. Hi Sean!

    Another lurker here. I think the most effective way to handle spam is to be very active on the comment thread at which I think you are already doing a great job. Ummm… so, I think my vote is status quo.

  5. I would like to see crackpot posts axed. They are easy to identify and they squash the discussion of interesting science. Define crackpot posts as “posts arguing from positions far outside the mainstream of scientific investigation,” and hack away. I’d be a lot more likely to read these threads to the end.

  6. At the risk of chiming in with a “me too”, let me say that I’m a physicist who would prefer a higher signal-to-noise ratio. There have been some fantastic discussions here, and I think they point to the fact that CV can be an amazing resource, but I often feel like the interesting parts need to be dug out. That said, CV is the only place where I regularly will at least skim through all 100 comments on a post, so the S/N is already pretty high.

  7. How would one have known you talked of string theory as a group? Watched, as you asked about rainbows? A stay at home with access to the internet?

  8. While this thread instigated a incubation to write another post on name, as I said, it was only part of it. The other part is linked below.

    Really a lot of us would lke to just be left alone to use the software, but if you discover “the freedom of the internet” should it be in such a strangle hold of what is allowed in China servers and what is not?

    Imagine only “circumventing cultures” while we could take it further and isolate the stay at home Gavin:)

    There has not been to much support and maybe the analysis of “laypersons to actual scientists” is a good comparison.

  9. I don’t think the comments here have gotten too crackpotty yet to warrant more draconian measures. But you have to be careful. The crank content is what eventually killed off the Usenet sci.physics.* groups. Although it was long composed of mostly laymen, there was always a vibrant expert community. But circa 2000 or so (+/- 3 years), the signal-to-noise ratio started getting so bad that most of them left; it was sad to see such mainstays as John Baez finally give up. Today there are hardly any threads going on that don’t consist of crackpot posts or the responses to them. So keep your eye on it… I don’t think a forum can tolerate a S/N ratio of lower than 3 or so.

  10. I think you should give the crackpots one chance to air their views in the comments section. Seeing the same (likely wrong) idea in every thread gets tiresome.

    For statistical purposes, I will note I read the comments only in the science-related posts, or if a post looks likely to provoke a bloodbath.

  11. Sean,

    If you’re concerned that outright deletion of crackpot posts is too draconian, why not just move them to a dedicated crackpot thread. It would be like an online version of “Coast to Coast AM”.

  12. I generally agree with Ben L & usually do 😉 However, the only problem is how do you keep the wonderful discussions we’ve had here over the last year+ going and remove the `background’ without killing the `signal’ ? I think we should just leave it alone & weed through the crazy comments `by eye’. This is what I do. As a general reader of the comments, I think we’ve done well by this method so far.

  13. fairly long-time reader, and a fan of the comments section. As a working scientist and engineer, I can pretty easily gloss over the crackpots, and that doesn’t bother me too much. I don’t feel I generally have to defend myself from them, just ignore them. Anything that requires more work from you (moderation) will mean decreased activity probably, and a drop in quality (since, in blogs cases, activity and quality are often (though not always) proportional).

    So — I’m for status quo on this topic.

  14. I agree with many posters here who have commented that the threads considered unwelcome (by general consensus) are currently few and far between and that readers could just skip those posts. However, that’s the situation right now.

    As posters are required to provide our e-mail address, I presume that one or more of the bloggers has access to this information. If someone persists in posting obviously disruptive/ digressive comments, could you just warn him/her and then block their future posts? I agree that they can come back in another guise, but at least this will hopefully help maintain a high S/N ratio at CV.

  15. heh. I think I wrote a book about this. Or at least a chapter.

    I know not the difference between crackpottery and brilliance, for I am mostly science ignorant. I have no idea why I’m here except to read about Joanne’s battles with the local squirrel population…and the pretty pictures are also nice. I do learn things and enjoy the posts, but yes, the crackpottery and asshattery does sort of make my head explode and feel a little bit embarassed for the CV writers who put a lot of thought into the blog…only to have things derailed by people with no inner dialogue.

    One solution is registration and implementing a bozo filter. People can mark certain posters “invisible” and never have to read them again.

    That tends to be a message board/community solution, though. I don’t know if you would want to extend that to the blog.

    You could just have a general mod policy where instead of deleting without comment, you have a set of comments like:

    “This is insane troll logic. Please rethink and try again.”

    “This post deleted due to asshattery. Please remove your asshat at our dinner table and try again.”

    Because A) funny, and B) gives the person the benefit of the doubt that maybe they just forgot their meds and can make a coherent argument once the lithium kicks in.

    Know what? How about if I moderate? That would be AWESOME!

    This was useless, right? Sorry.

  16. I read the “Comments” and somtimes found good info in them. Recently I read that someone else thinks that there may have been more than one Big Bang. If I didn’t read the “Comments” I would have missed that. Sometimes we can fine tune too much when it is best to leave alone. Enjoy this blog.

  17. 12 11 06

    Well I have never commented here, I don’t think but have visited many times. I think that the crackpottery comments make the threads more interesting. And even if the crackpots aren’t listening, you can bet that some other person is. I have learned countless things by browsing comment threads and looking at refutations of so called crackpots. The refutations show critical thinking and can aid in synthesizing these complex ideas.
    And from time to time, the crackpot may be onto something. Ultimately physics isn’t a democracy when it comes to ideas, however, physics is better when a lot of people are thinking from quite different perspectives.
    On the other hand, if someone is insulting that needn’t be tolerated.

    Allyson’s suggestions for dealing with troll comments make some sense. Joking about the lack in logic of some posts can alleviate tension. Then you could always ignore the trolls;)

  18. For the record, I hate sites that require me to register before commenting. I understand why they do it, and I’m sympathetic to their plight, but 9 times out of 10 I’ll just sigh, “Oh, forget it then,” and jump to a different URL without commenting.

    Now you know how to get rid of me… 🙂

  19. As someone who spends too much time in the blogsphere, i offer my suggestion based solely on personal preference. There are very few blogs where the host allows unfettered and free access to all commentors; horsesass.org being one. Those that do so are understandably political and derive the mix of opinions, rude crude and otherwise, that stimulate the debate. Most of the rest of the blogsphere, from cultural zones through edumacation, from science to philosophy, are moderated, for purposes much as Sean and Mark have described above. Crackpots are everywhere, and it seems that we all have our own versions of them and our own travails with them. Be that as it may, they serve a purpose up to a point, and limiting their posts based on their persistent unwillingness to learn might be a valid, but time consuming, methodology. Plus, i love reading CV each day, and learn so much from so many. Just keep up the good done well and the rest will fall in line as it most often appears to do.

  20. The most interesting comment threads are the ones where experts interact. (Often folks who have their own blogs using the comments to discuss difficult questions.) The crackpottery and off-topic rambling both discourages knowledgable folks from contributing, and discourages everyone from reading lenghty comment threads.

    I’m all for encouraging you to be as heavy-handed as you feel comfortable being. Moderation is a thankless and time-devouring job, so we can’t expect you to put effort into it, but anything you want to do to increase the signal/noise will certainly be appreciated.

    As you say, this space is akin to your living room and we are all guests in your home. You set the community standards here. Any judgement calls are yours to make.

    Thanks for inviting us in.

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