urbanSTL

JuiceInDogtown wrote:Anywho, I agree, debating it on UrbanSTL is probably not the place.

You would be right.

Ok which of you guys is "Billy Bob Bubba Joe St Charles"??

This comment made me . It's regarding the 2010 Tour of Missouri

Billy Bob Bubba Joe St Charles February 8, 2010 11:30AM CST
Typical liberal drivel from Kinder. This silly 'race' is pure socialism. This is not a sport, and nobody cares about the race. These bikers all hate america anyway.

I just commented on a story.... it looks like they might be changing their system. It said "Waiting for comment to be moderated."

It also looked like a different screen to enter the comments, not to mention my avatar is now gone.

So now comments include voting buttons. But there's a fatal flaw. Once a comment reaches a certain threshold (of either upvotes or downvotes), the vote option is locked out.

Along with some of the usual garbage comments, I'm seeing a handful of decently written and thoughtful comments getting downvoted into the abyss. The only reason I can imagine is that their authors' opinions don't agree with those of the people who had the vote option available to them at the time. And once they comment is below that threshold, they can't be resurrected by well-meaning folks.

ben1040 wrote:So now comments include voting buttons. But there's a fatal flaw. Once a comment reaches a certain threshold (of either upvotes or downvotes), the vote option is locked out.


Along with some of the usual garbage comments, I'm seeing a handful of decently written and thoughtful comments getting downvoted into the abyss. The only reason I can imagine is that their authors' opinions don't agree with those of the people who had the vote option available to them at the time. And once they comment is below that threshold, they can't be resurrected by well-meaning folks.

That threshold issue does look to be a problem. Additionally, I couldn't change my vote, which is something I feel that should be an option. Also, it would be nice if the comments could be sorted from most to least valuable. BTW, there seems to be no way to adjust avatars.

BTW, the comment system you speak of only applies to comments in the "Blog Zone." What blog infrastructure are they using? News articles utilize Domino infrastructure and have an altogether different way of handling comments.

It looks like they are starting to implement some of the capabilities mentioned @ STLtomorrow: http://stltomorrow.org/index.php?option ... 7&Itemid=8. This is a step in the right direction...

Maybe it was a glitch with the story I was reading that the buttons weren't functioning properly.

As for the user icons, it looks like they're farming those out to gravatar.com. I noticed it was showing the gravatar tied to the email address I registered with my stltoday.com account.

The "old" comments feature on their Lotus Domino stories is a bolt-on addition from this company:

http://www.theport.com/

Some choice nuggets if anyone cares to reply:

(Warning sirens) EPIC FAIL ALERT!!! EPIC FAIL ALERT!!! This prop has just as much chance of passing as St. LIBous does as being recoginized as one of the safest cities to live in for 2010. BOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIING.

Just another entitlement program promoted by the nanny-culture, do-gooder bureaucrats who want to plan where we live, shop and travel in the area. If there is some process by which these guys can repeatedly propose increases to our tax burden, there ought to be a way in which the ordinary citizens can propose and vote on a decrease in their budget and revenue - and make it stick for 5 years or so! It is time for these public payroll parasites to lift their snouts from the public trough and pay attention to the taxpaying public's clearly expressed wishes.

I was a real working person who contributed to society unlike a lot of the youg non paying punks that use the system and that are on welfare. Get a life and maybe you better start looking for another means of transportation since it is going to fail.

Metro has never been a viable organization and will never be the way it is being run. I am sure Obozo will give Metro more tax dollars borrowed from China after the tax fails.

..of you that can't see the trash on the ghetto Metro drive across Grand between Hyw 40 and Chouteau and see whats coming out of the elevators and running in front of traffic daring you to hit them. They usually look like their running from the police.

Pete Parisi February 21, 2010 9:52PM CST
Moderator's note: Nearly every comment on this story seems to be posters' lame attempt at being clever or funny, making references to various TV sports or weathercasters. Which is why we are closing comments.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/s ... enDocument

I would rather they scrap comments altogether than use the system they have on the "Blogzone" comments. That method "hides" comments that are given low ratings. The problem is folks are disapproving comments they disagree with rather than just ones that are offensive or hateful. Considering the political, demographic and geographic bent of many of those who seem to have all day to spend on the STL Today comment board, well I think we can see where this is going

It seems like any news article about African Americans, crime, the city, or Muslims will elicit some idiotic responses.

This one is interesting, though.

Mr Brown: This comment is coming from one of you–an African American–and I grew up in North St. Louis, attended the crappy public school system, then worked 3 hours after school M-F, studied at night, graduated, then went on to college and now am enrolled in graduate school. The most time my dad spent with me was 10 minutes of fornicating with my mother 24 years ago. And that’s all it was, Claude! Otherwise, he has been out of the picture for 24 years! The public schools are crap, Claude. Why? Not because of Whitey, but because of our cool bros! They make it crap, Claude, because they’re lazy and want to complain about Whitey (because it’s easier than studying and working), and they want that welfare check every month, Claude. You know it and I know it. We’re both “bros”, Claude, so you can’t fool me! I’m tired of feeling embarrassed because I’m Black, Claude. The majority of the entire race embarrasses me, Claude! People like you think you’re doing a great job representing the AA community, but all you’re doing is perpetuating the cancer, Claude. You’re making it OK for Black teens to do little more at school than feel up the girls, threaten the teachers, and defy anyone to teach them anything. If I could bleach my skin and straighten my hair, I’d do it TODAY, Claude. Why? Because I’ve made something of myself, without WELFARE, without any gov’t support, but with the example of my sweet mother and the desire to become….something.

I have to leave now to go to work, Claude. Yes, work! Unfortunately, I’m forced to work 3hours in the morning, then 4 hours at the same place 2 hours after the first shift ends. Pain in the butt? You bet, Claude. But it’s what we have to do to survive. You and the rest of the NAACP should preach that sermon, Claude–not the sermon about Whitey~!

The article:
http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/s ... in-nation/

The comments on the South county crime spree on Monday night are really enlightening. Now I have no problem the scum who did this being locked up for good in a concrete cell where they are terrorized daily by their fellow thugs.

But as usual most of the commenters think that isn't enough and advocate racial profiling and detaining all black youths. They claim that "demographic" is just too violent to trust. Now considering this is St. Louis I imagine many of them are German-Americans like I am. Yeah our "demographic" has never been violent or caused any problems for society have we

Of course expecting your average STL Today commenter to understand the irony in that is like expecting a pile of rocks to understand the subtle humor of British comedy.

I think I may have discovered a life form lower than the typical STLToday commenter: the ksdk.com commenter. OMG.

I meant to post this here when I came across it a few weeks ago.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magaz ... ?page=full

This part stuck out to me:

If we hope to clean up the online conversation, we need a better understanding of the select group of people doing most of the talking. Studies have shown that participation rates in online social communities tend to follow something called the “90-9-1” rule. About 90 percent of the people are “lurkers,” that is, watching but not actively contributing; 9 percent are infrequent contributors; and 1 percent are, to borrow a term from the fast-food industry, the heavy users.

It follows to me that the P-D could dump comments altogether and only draw the ire of the 1% of their user base -- and based on their "contributions," the P-D doesn't want these people around anyway.

The comments sections on many general-interest news sites lack both the carrot and the stick for encouraging responsible behavior. The carrot is the cohesion of a group you don’t want to disappoint, like Yoshimi25’s Front Burner community. The stick is the shame associated with having your real name publicly attached to embarrassing behavior. Without these two levers, the social contract breaks down.

Hey, P-D: Here's a free idea.

Charge $5-10/month for "plus" access on the site, and make it free for people who already subscribe to daily home delivery. With it you would get:
- ad free access
- longer article retention
- commenting as a paid feature.

Paying to comment means people have to have a little skin in the game. You could still allow people to post under handles, because people like being able to present themselves to the community with a handle that reflects their interests or lifestyles.

But now they have a cash investment at stake if they screw up and get their commenting access banned. If they want to just re-sign up under another email, it sets up a barrier since they'd have to pay for a second account.

Now you establish a carrot, because users would perceive the service and community as more valuable to them because they're paying for it. The stick is that you now can lose that valuable service you paid for if you get out of line.

^ As someone that pays a measly $8 per month to get the P-D delivered to my home, I'd be okay with that idea.

Alex Ihnen wrote:The question is what service does the comment section provide?

What service does this board provide? A mostly intelligent, moderated discussion on news and local issues, I would assume.

The comment section on the P-D could be one of two things.

It could be what the P-D has right now: a place where people can freely sign up with any throwaway email address and post garbage. Moderators have so much trash to wade through that they can't address every situation. The typical user who visits the site might not even care less about comments. The insufferable rants attached to every article may even turn people off to reading the articles altogether -- I think the P-D knows this, and it's probably not simply for sake of cleaner web design that they moved comments to a "Discussion" tab on article pages.

It could also be a community. There are some posters on the P-D articles that legitimately add value to the discussions. I recall at least one occasion where someone who lived nearby the site of a big news event had added ongoing comments about what was going on, and not in a "rubbernecking" sort of way. There are some posters who get into intelligent debates about politics as opposed to saying 'xyz was Bush's fault' or 'it's all a socialist conspiracy.' People are more likely to make intelligent remarks if they know they won't be drowned out by crap.

The tradeoff is that in order to join you have to make a small upfront investment in the service, and there are repercussions for straying (the financial aspect making it more likely that if you're banned you'll stay banned). The quality of moderation is better; staff have less to sort through because people have an incentive to be on good behavior.

If the P-D simply sees commenting and "social" features as a way to get people to spend more time on the site and generate more ad impressions, they're letting those features water down the news product as well as stifle what could potentially be a more rich social experience. So they should either ditch the social angle altogether or put some serious effort into making it a quality product.