Monday, October 21, 2013

Fuck Comments

I fucking hate comments on most webpages. What a stupid fucking concept. Why did people think that on a website about news and facts that there should be allowed a den of pseudo-anonymous commentary with concern of "facts" and "truth?" Why should there be a shitstorm of non-tech experts at the bottom of a tech article? Did people honestly not think that would be a problem, despite how notoriously terrible comments are? Did people not realise that what might be said on their site might be associated with the site? Do people not know about youtube?

If people want to discuss the news, they absolutely should be allowed to, but not on a news site. It's for the fucking news. Link that shit on reddit and talk about it. But keep it off the site. Newspapers don't just allow anybody to say whatever and then distribute it all over the world. Do you know why? Because that's a stupid ass-backwards idea of how events in the world should be presented to the public.

I can see arguments for comments: it'll increase how long people stay on your website, which can increase add revenue. It makes the people commenting feel like they have more of an investment in your site, so their more likely to come back. But the kind of people who spend all of their time talking in the comments on a website are not the sort of people i would want associated with my site.

I think there is even some value in comments, if it's a dialogue with the author. Sometimes, say, a blog author can respond to an attack on the thesis of a point; this has clear value. Perhaps the author can tighten his post up, or in other ways continue the debate about a particular subject. This seems like it's clearly adding value to the website, but not every website gets this same value from interactions with the larger community.

Ultimately, it's every website's choice whether or not to allow comments. It should be every author's choice whether or not to allow the community to respond to her post on her own site, if she feels like drinking raw sewage. But it should not be a foregone conclusion for all websites. Just because implementation of a comments system is becoming easier doesn't mean it's necessarily worth having.

Because really, fuck comments.

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