On "bad" blog comments
A reader sends along a link to an interesting take on comments in the blogosphere (among other things):
There are two main kinds of badness in comments: meanness and stupidity. There is a lot of overlap between the two—mean comments are disproportionately likely also to be dumb—but the strategies for dealing with them are different. Meanness is easier to control. You can have rules saying one shouldn't be mean, and if you enforce them it seems possible to keep a lid on meanness.The whole thing is here.Keeping a lid on stupidity is harder, perhaps because stupidity is not so easily distinguishable. Mean people are more likely to know they're being mean than stupid people are to know they're being stupid.
The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the long but mistaken argument, but the dumb joke. Long but mistaken arguments are actually quite rare. There is a strong correlation between comment quality and length; if you wanted to compare the quality of comments on community sites, average length would be a good predictor. Probably the cause is human nature rather than anything specific to comment threads. Probably it's simply that stupidity more often takes the form of having few ideas than wrong ones.
Whatever the cause, stupid comments tend to be short. And since it's hard to write a short comment that's distinguished for the amount of information it conveys, people try to distinguish them instead by being funny. The most tempting format for stupid comments is the supposedly witty put-down, probably because put-downs are the easiest form of humor. So one advantage of forbidding meanness is that it also cuts down on these.
Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly. Comments have much more effect on new comments than submissions have on new submissions. If someone submits a lame article, the other submissions don't all become lame. But if someone posts a stupid comment on a thread, that sets the tone for the region around it. People reply to dumb jokes with dumb jokes.
Maybe the solution is to add a delay before people can respond to a comment, and make the length of the delay inversely proportional to some prediction of its quality. Then dumb threads would grow slower.
| Posted at 10:19 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (11)
I will admit to being guilty of both malicious and stupid comments.
It is very hard for me to let political partisans (including myself) to let snarky comments pass without a counterpoint.
If that counterpoint is mean or dumb, then the blog administrator should control the conversation and delete it.
When it comes to politics and policy, the discussion is bound to become heated. After all, when you have partisans and ideologues putting forth arguments, they of course will lie about the responsibility for a policy outcome that was due to the principles enunciated by their party or ideology. For example, the Republican party governing for 12 years (1994-2006), and Republican partisans blaming the current economic crisis solely on Democrats and their support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac without acknowledgment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, that Ayn Rand worshiper Alan Greenspan, and reckless military spending under George W Bush, and an economic policy of tax cuts during a time where we are waging 2 wars as a cause for this current economic calamity. Thus, people like myself who respond to such arguments will respond in kind and with emotion attached due to what we perceive as a "lie" without basis in "our " reality.
That is the reason why I step overboard at times. I apologize if individuals take my criticism of their party or ideology as a personal affront.
Posted by YoungOregonMoonbat | March 1, 2009 11:16 AM
Is moronic hyperbole on the stupid list?
How about the trend of neo-DaDa irrelevancy as a form of passive- agressive disagreement ?
Posted by jussaskin | March 1, 2009 12:55 PM
The worst is the person who, unable to counter any of the points a poster makes, resorts to name calling.
Posted by mp97303 | March 1, 2009 1:38 PM
"How about the trend of neo-DaDa irrelevancy as a form of passive- agressive disagreement ?"
That unedited comment doesn't appear to be mean. Maybe it's meant to be an illustration of the other badness.
Posted by cros | March 1, 2009 3:39 PM
Huh?
Posted by canucken | March 1, 2009 4:05 PM
I'm making a lot more dumb jokes now that the dumb joke in the White House is gone.
Posted by Bill McDonald | March 1, 2009 4:13 PM
Well now, oh mercy, don't get me started.
My two guidelines around stupidity and maliciousness: Research and reputation.
Where I doubt, I try to look it up.
Where I have seen a reputation for veracity and fair conduct become established, I believe anything further from the source -- the exemplar to me is MediaMatters.ORG
In all, caveat emptor, where the reader gets to decide, alone, whether or not to 'buy it.'
My on-going tirade against LIARS Larson is for the simple reason that he goes on LYING, brazen and bald-faced ... and probably intentional because if his words were only a matter of stupidity, then it stands to reason that some percentage of times perhaps he would speak a true fact accidentally.
Often I find internal inconsistency negates any effectiveness of false claims. As in an old Bill Cosby comedy bit:
High School Shop teacher: Awwright ... who put a bullet in the furnace?
Students: [silence]
Teacher: Y'know, if you put a bullet in the furnace, it reflects on your mother.
Student voice: Hey, I didn't put no bullet in no furnace but you watch what you say about my momma.
Posted by Tenskwatawa | March 1, 2009 4:15 PM
Perhaps we find ourselves so powerless to change the inevitable we start to believe substantive discussion is futile. We use dark humor or snide remarks as way to vent, or as a defense mechanism. Fact is, little we would have posted could have prevented the war, or the tram from being built, or the market from collapsing. Sure, we could all write great responses based on logic and reason, but we become lazy when it comes time to express it all thoughtfully. We resort to that which easiest and makes us feel best. That is, to comment stupidly, or with a joke. Long live the one sentence post.
Posted by Gibby | March 1, 2009 9:28 PM
Ditto what Gibby said.
It is just too hard to watch our public assets given away like candy and squandered like play money while basic services are being starved. The need to whine about it would disappear if the game wasn't so effectively rigged.
Posted by dyspeptic | March 2, 2009 12:32 AM
Short, mean and dumb. I resemble that.
Posted by Allan L. | March 2, 2009 7:21 AM
A long post that says long posts are inherently smart is an implicit joke. However, it is a dumb joke. I smart post is then stupid and I have proved Godel's Theorem. QED.
Posted by Dave C. | March 3, 2009 9:46 AM