If comments are so terrible, fix them or disable them!

Given what the GB staff have been saying about the article comments lately, I’ve got to ask: why do they still exist? It’s pretty clear they see little to no value in comments, and whenever they come up, the sentiment is “ugh, the internet sucks.”

Setting aside how unfair it is for the staff to paint the entire community with a simple brush — especially when there’s a lot of interesting, thoughtful responses that are being totally ignored — it’s on some level their responsibility to try to improve things. Maybe that means only letting premium members comment, connecting comments to Facebook accounts, using up a voting system, setting and enforcing higher standards, or doing something besides sitting on the sidelines and saying “well, that’s the internet, what can you do?” It’s your site! You can do whatever you want! Nobody’s forcing you to just grit your teeth and endure this aspect of your site you clearly don’t think is working.

Not liking comments is entirely valid, but talking shit about comments while directly profiting from them and not addressing the underlying problems isn’t. This is a problem other sites have solved (or at least mitigated) — Giant Bomb can as well.

Patrick specifically took time to respond to comments on his article today, so they must see some value in them.

Giant Bomb ain't no dictatorship.

Huh. I've never thought of straight up disabling comments for topics. Seems just like a given since the dawn of the internet, but I guess that what forums could be used for? Yeah, the fact that the staff (from time to time, its not constant) shit on the users, lumping them together with everything that is bad about the internet is a bit annoying. Why complain when you have the power to change it? You have your own site!!

As for the whole Patrick writing about the ladies and such...I haven't even given it a click, and don't intend to. Seeing it pop up again after the big hubub last week almost makes it seem like he's looking for clicks at this point.

The comments very rarely provide anything of use in news stories/editorials like the one Patrick posted today. There is no discussion, just people shouting at each other.

Censorship through disabling comments is not the way. Dissenting opinions need to be expressed so they can be refuted and shamed.

@Ramone said:

The comments very rarely provide anything of use in news stories/editorials like the one Patrick posted today. There is no discussion, just people shouting at each other.

There’s reasonable stuff in there, it’s just hard to find in the huge threads. Flat linear threads kind of fall apart when they go beyond a few pages.

@SpunkyHePanda said:

Patrick specifically took time to respond to comments on his article today, so they must see some value in them.

True, but that’s got very little to do with issues they’ve talked about. Replying to a dozen comments isn’t a solution to anything, especially when half of your responses are of the “I’m sorry you disagree” or “thanks for the compliment” variety. Patrick’s never given any real indication he respects the comments so much as he endures them.

@GrantHeaslip said:

Given what the GB staff have been saying about the article comments lately, I’ve got to ask: why do they still exist? It’s pretty clear they see little to no value in comments, and whenever they come up, the sentiment is “ugh, the internet sucks.”

Setting aside how unfair it is for the staff to paint the entire community with a simple brush — especially when there’s a lot of interesting, thoughtful responses that are being totally ignored — it’s on some level their responsibility to try to improve things. Maybe that means only letting premium members comment, connecting comments to Facebook accounts, using up a voting system, setting and enforcing higher standards, or doing something besides sitting on the sidelines and saying “well, that’s the internet, what can you do?” It’s your site! You can do whatever you want! Nobody’s forcing you to just grit your teeth and endure this aspect of your site you clearly don’t think is working.

Not liking comments is entirely valid, but talking shit about comments while directly profiting from them and not addressing the underlying problems isn’t. This is a problem other sites have solved (or at least mitigated) — Giant Bomb can as well.

It's not unique to GB. Game journalists treating their audience with total disdain and complete dismissal and antagonism is pretty much par for the course, across the entire swath of them, these days. I have never seen a group of "journalists" that have such a general disgust for their audience as game journalists. And they pretty much continue to push the same sort of group-think where they use podcasts and other venues to chastise entire swaths of their readership. I'm sure you've heard them say things essentially to the fact that if you have any other opinion on, say, the torso thing other than "the people behind the torso are sick monsters bordering on rapists who are making rape culture okay and blah blah blah" you are a braindead neanderthal who should go shoot himself in his mom's basement. There seems to be little middle ground in most of their comments. Either you buy along with the exact same playbook of butt-hurt that they have from point A to point B or you're the worse of the worst and classified as "that part of the internet". Frankly, it turns me off that their response tends to be so simpleminded and lacking variance.

If these guys are so disgusted with the opinions of much of their readership, then ban us. Delete us. Delete our comments. Delete the whole comment and forum sections. I mean, you've already shown utter disgust at anyone who goes out of their way to participate in discussions that you instigate, so just go all the way. Of course, the comments and the community are often the only place you will hear anything different than the same old bullshit that every game journalist spits out, too. It's almost like the community has to be a separate journalist entity unto themselves to provide alternate views of things, because the "journalists" sure as fuck are rarely interested in that.

And then, they wonder why the readership has such a confrontational relationship with game journalists and why we regard them with so little respect. It's a two way street.

(Mind you, I'm not saying there aren't truly hideous things said out there that are just unfathomable and almost even unbelievable. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who merely play devil's advocate or even approach something from a different perspective than the agreed-upon group-think view of all of gaming journalism. Ermagherd! You're not instantly calling for Silver-whatever's heads on a throne or their castration - you are a hideous chauvinist pig that probably beats his wife and gropes women on public transit! durp durp durp! Forum comments are so disgusting, I'm going to lift my dainty white skirt up as I jump away from the filthy comment section!".)

So. Fuck 'em.

@AlisterCat said:

Censorship through disabling comments is not the way. Dissenting opinions need to be expressed so they can be refuted and shamed.

Exactly. Because dissenting opinions need to be shamed.

@GrantHeaslip said:

@Ramone said:

The comments very rarely provide anything of use in news stories/editorials like the one Patrick posted today. There is no discussion, just people shouting at each other.

There’s reasonable stuff in there, it’s just hard to find in the huge threads. Flat linear threads kind of fall apart when they go beyond a few pages.

I've never really understood that, myself. Why in the hell is every forum everywhere these days just a big flat chronological thread? Whatever happened to nested and threaded forums? This flat format makes me stop following discussions VERY quickly, because it's hard to keep track of what's going on, where you left off, and even hard to find the message you received a notification on to reply to (since the link usually just directs you to the page in the discussion that it *thinks* the comment might be on). As a result, I usually drop out of conversations half way through -- probably making a lot of people think I'm being a prick and intentionally ignoring them. I end up reading the first couple pages, the last couple pages (if that) and ignoring everything in-between.

I'd also like to think it would be beneficial if they implemented some sort of community voting system/moderation system again. There was one (sort of) early on. On the other hand, those very quickly turn into votes of "I agree!" or "fuck you!" and that sucks. I read a lot of comments and a lot of replies to my comments that I don't agree with, but they're still worthwhile content that I'd want to read. I don't really know how we keep it to a "does this contribute to the conversation" moderation rather than a "most of the group doesn't agree with this opinion, so they're burying it" moderation.

I never solved this, myself, either. After well over a decade with a large community with over 100k people with software I wrote completely from scratch (including the forum and communication systems), I kept adding tools to it. Even moderation and staff moderation functionality that helped encourage people to edge conversations into productive or interesting directions while filtering out spam and utter hate (and.. again... without driving away different or dissenting opinions). . . even after a decade, I never figured it out. In the end, I don't even know if it's possible. When you get a lot of people having a conversation, it slivers off in so many directions and so many things are misinterpreted and things escalate and spin around this way and that . . . . they take a life of their own. Until the burn out and pick up again in the next discussion.

I *think* one thing that might help -- and this is one that I did not ever try -- is requiring payment. I don't know if NeoGAF does that, but I've seen that Something Aweful does. Make an account cost $10 and hope that encourages people to be (even if contrarian and a little combative) more constructive.

@Branthog: I mean more opposing opinions, either to the article or to you. So if you agree you can argue and if you disagree you can argue with those who agree. I guess I was thinking more of trolling with dissenting 'opinions'.

Also, comment sections substantially increase the repeat traffic through the site, most especially if there is heated debate that results in many many users making many many clickety clicks. :)

I don't agree with disabling them but the comments are treated with disdain because they deserve it. Just look at them. It's ridiculous. It's not everyone obviously but it's just a select few horrible people who ruin it for everyone.

Do you think anyone on staff would ever even consider that the quality of the comments often reflect the quality of the article?

Maybe that means only letting premium members comment, connecting comments to Facebook accounts, using up a voting system, setting and enforcing higher standards,

@Milkman said:

I don't agree with disabling them but the comments are treated with disdain because they deserve it. Just look at them. It's ridiculous. It's not everyone obviously but it's just a select few horrible people who ruin it for everyone.

I saw you arguing with everyone who disagreed with the article, including the ones that actually had solid points.

You just painted the GB staff with a single brush.

@HerbieBug said:

Also, comment sections substantially increase the repeat traffic through the site, most especially if there is heated debate that results in many many users making many many clickety clicks. :)

Sure, but that seems like the opposite of what Giant Bomb’s supposed to stand for.

@Branthog said:

It's not unique to GB. Game journalists treating their audience with total disdain and complete dismissal and antagonism is pretty much par for the course, across the entire swath of them, these days. I have never seen a group of "journalists" that have such a general disgust for their audience as game journalists. And they pretty much continue to push the same sort of group-think where they use podcasts and other venues to chastise entire swaths of their readership. I'm sure you've heard them say things essentially to the fact that if you have any other opinion on, say, the torso thing other than "the people behind the torso are sick monsters bordering on rapists who are making rape culture okay and blah blah blah" you are a braindead neanderthal who should go shoot himself in his mom's basement. There seems to be little middle ground in most of their comments. Either you buy along with the exact same playbook of butt-hurt that they have from point A to point B or you're the worse of the worst and classified as "that part of the internet". Frankly, it turns me off that their response tends to be so simpleminded and lacking variance.

If these guys are so disgusted with the opinions of much of their readership, then ban us. Delete us. Delete our comments. Delete the whole comment and forum sections. I mean, you've already shown utter disgust at anyone who goes out of their way to participate in discussions that you instigate, so just go all the way. Of course, the comments and the community are often the only place you will hear anything different than the same old bullshit that every game journalist spits out, too. It's almost like the community has to be a separate journalist entity unto themselves to provide alternate views of things, because the "journalists" sure as fuck are rarely interested in that.

And then, they wonder why the readership has such a confrontational relationship with game journalists and why we regard them with so little respect. It's a two way street.

(Mind you, I'm not saying there aren't truly hideous things said out there that are just unfathomable and almost even unbelievable. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who merely play devil's advocate or even approach something from a different perspective than the agreed-upon group-think view of all of gaming journalism. Ermagherd! You're not instantly calling for Silver-whatever's heads on a throne or their castration - you are a hideous chauvinist pig that probably beats his wife and gropes women on public transit! durp durp durp! Forum comments are so disgusting, I'm going to lift my dainty white skirt up as I jump away from the filthy comment section!".)

So. Fuck 'em.

I’m not on board with everything there, but in general sentiment, I agree. I think it’s fine for game journalists to say that parts of their communities are bad — video game sites probably do attract more shitty commenters than many others — but it’s the broad stereotyping that bugs me. This site’s got a lot of great, thoughtful, respectful posters — many of whom strongly disagree some staff opinions — and putting them in the same basket as the YouTube crowd is shitty, unfair, and unnecessarily antagonsic (and, to YouTube’s credit, they’ve at least been trying to improve things).

I also agree that I’ve been finding better, more complex, more factually accurate, and more interesting commentary and discussions in the forums than I have been from the staff (and games journalists in general).

@Ramone said:

The comments very rarely provide anything of use in news stories/editorials like the one Patrick posted today. There is no discussion, just people shouting at each other.

Really? I received a LOT of PMs from people with regard to my comment in that thread (which I personally thought I wrote too quickly, without any proof-reading or second-read through, off-the-cuff, too wordy, and in a bit of an antagonized and frustrated/exhausted mood to be of any interest to anyone whatsoever). They all said that I expressed a lot of sentiment that they had tried or wanted to say, but had not "so eloquently". (Someone even said it was twice as good as the article, itself). I think that's kind of those people, but personally I *know* I tend to be too off-the-cuff, not exercise enough brevity, and indulge too much in an emotional response than a more thoughtful and well-constructed one that I would write if I were producing an article.

I say all that to lead to my personal point that I quite often read responses in the comment section of articles that are far more compelling, curious, or even informative than the articles themselves. It's harder to pick those out when they're deeper into these ten and fifty page threads with no nesting and just a bit ugly flat flow of chronological comments, but I know they're sprinkled throughout there. Often with a lot of obnoxious two sentence shit spewed between them, from someone who just read the title or something and dumped their thoughts in (I'm guilty of that, too). Often with a lot of mean shit said in-between about Alex or Patrick or whoever wrote the article (and that, I agree is the internet being internet). It ain't all gold. Not even most of it is gold. But enough of it is that I find it worth giving at least a cursory scan through other people's contributions.

If everyone wrote the stuff I wrote, I'd probably hate it. I know I'm an accomplished writer and it's a significant part of my profession, in fact. But I'm kind of a shitty commentor. But there are so many good ones out there and even the ones that post 90% garbage produce enlightening and thought-provoking gems, sometimes. So I can't even write them off by name, either.

@SpunkyHePanda said:

Patrick specifically took time to respond to comments on his article today, so they must see some value in them.

When I see @patrickklepek respond to comments most of the time, I am not sure how to interpret it. Especially when he responds to mine (rarely, but it has happened). I don't know if he really wants to engage in a discussion with people or if he is responding because he feels that he has received so much criticism or attack in a particular article or discussion that he is compelled to counter (human nature). I try to be a thoughtful person considerate of other people's emotions and the fact that no matter what I think of anyone, they still have a regular life with regular bullshit to deal with when they step away from the keyboard, but I'm as guilty as any other mother fucker of saying shit a little too quickly, hotly, and judgmentally. I know that I'm not trying to make it personal and that all the things I just said sort of exist in my mind while I compose something to someone. I know that I can compartmentalize my arguments with people, my criticism of them, and my responses to them without it impacting my general view and like of them. But afterward, when I'm done saying whatever shit I have to spew onto the screen, I sometimes pause and think "shit, is that other person -- is patrick or alex or drew or that other GB user that I was replying to going to realize where I'm coming from? Are they going to feel hurt by my tone? Are they going to understand that I can have a vigorous back and forth with them or pick their comment apart without it being personal and that in twenty minutes I'll be having a totally different conversation with the same person in another thread and an entirely different tone?!".

A lot of that is communicating over the internet. A lot of that is just me being a shitty internet person. I guess you try to balance things and hope others try to balance things and not take them too seriously or literally . . . and hope we all meet on the other side and shake hands. I certainly hope that nothing I ever say on here (or elsewhere, for that matter) makes someone go home at the end of the day and hate their job. If I knew I contributed to that, I would probably shut the fuck up, because nothing I might throw into a conversation here is worth ruining someone's day.

@Petiew said:

@GrantHeaslip said:

Maybe that means only letting premium members comment, connecting comments to Facebook accounts, using up a voting system, setting and enforcing higher standards,

The only decent idea is setting and enforcing higher standards, all of the others are kind of bad ideas and would only serve to make things worse. Up and down voting essentially results in a hivemind circlejerk. It discourages discussion and positive arguments and stamps out differing or controversial opinions. People can't speak their minds because they'll be downvoted and their comments will be hidden. I've seen countless well thought out arguments ignored, mocked and downvoted because they didn't fit what the majority came to an article or video to bitch about. In case you haven't noticed, premium members (apologies for lack of a better word) shitpost as much as us lowly peon regular members. It would only prevent people from making new accounts simply so their regular account didn't get a bad reputation, but I don't think many people even do this. Besides, poverty users have stuff to say too, it's not fair to put the privilege of commenting behind a paywall. Lots of people also don't use facebook, don't want their identity published, or don't want their facebook page filled with giantbomb posts.

Yeah, some of those ideas have issues, I was just listing stuff that’s been done.

@Branthog said:

I've never really understood that, myself. Why in the hell is every forum everywhere these days just a big flat chronological thread? Whatever happened to nested and threaded forums? This flat format makes me stop following discussions VERY quickly, because it's hard to keep track of what's going on, where you left off, and even hard to find the message you received a notification on to reply to (since the link usually just directs you to the page in the discussion that it *thinks* the comment might be on). As a result, I usually drop out of conversations half way through -- probably making a lot of people think I'm being a prick and intentionally ignoring them. I end up reading the first couple pages, the last couple pages (if that) and ignoring everything in-between.

I'd also like to think it would be beneficial if they implemented some sort of community voting system/moderation system again. There was one (sort of) early on. On the other hand, those very quickly turn into votes of "I agree!" or "fuck you!" and that sucks. I read a lot of comments and a lot of replies to my comments that I don't agree with, but they're still worthwhile content that I'd want to read. I don't really know how we keep it to a "does this contribute to the conversation" moderation rather than a "most of the group doesn't agree with this opinion, so they're burying it" moderation.

I never solved this, myself, either. After well over a decade with a large community with over 100k people with software I wrote completely from scratch (including the forum and communication systems), I kept adding tools to it. Even moderation and staff moderation functionality that helped encourage people to edge conversations into productive or interesting directions while filtering out spam and utter hate (and.. again... without driving away different or dissenting opinions). . . even after a decade, I never figured it out. In the end, I don't even know if it's possible. When you get a lot of people having a conversation, it slivers off in so many directions and so many things are misinterpreted and things escalate and spin around this way and that . . . . they take a life of their own. Until the burn out and pick up again in the next discussion.

I *think* one thing that might help -- and this is one that I did not ever try -- is requiring payment. I don't know if NeoGAF does that, but I've seen that Something Aweful does. Make an account cost $10 and hope that encourages people to be (even if contrarian and a little combative) more constructive.

There’s definitely no easy solution, but it’s been becoming clear that something needs to be done. I agree that not letting people post unless they’ve paid something (whether it be buying merch, subscribing, or dropping $5 on comment access) — or maybe just provided an ISP or work email like NeoGAF — might help a lot. If you look at the “8 Women” thread, a lot of the more useless and mean stuff is by non-subscribers with low post counts.

It's the job of the moderators to clean up the shitty comments. Cases like the "Eight Responses" are thankfully rare.

@Milkman said:

I don't agree with disabling them but the comments are treated with disdain because they deserve it. Just look at them. It's ridiculous. It's not everyone obviously but it's just a select few horrible people who ruin it for everyone.

I saw you arguing with everyone who disagreed with the article, including the ones that actually had solid points.

@Milkman said:

@GreggD said:

@Milkman said:

I don't agree with disabling them but the comments are treated with disdain because they deserve it. Just look at them. It's ridiculous. It's not everyone obviously but it's just a select few horrible people who ruin it for everyone.

I saw you arguing with everyone who disagreed with the article, including the ones that actually had solid points.

I didn't say there was no discussion to be had in them. But the idiotic ridiculous comments like the guy who said "these girls are probably just insecure about boobs because they're fat" or the guy calling people "libtards" overshadow the meaningful discussion and leave a smoldering mess of disgusting internet.

Don't respond to those then? They were the minority of posts in that topic. If I look through that topic, I see a ton of reasonable well thought out arguments, and everybody just only responding to the terrible ones.

Doesn't this website award Internet points to people who post "first" responses in the comments? C'mon. You can't have it both ways and then complain about it. That's really dumb, you guys.

@SpunkyHePanda said:

Patrick specifically took time to respond to comments on his article today, so they must see some value in them.

Doesn't Alex do that in every article he publishes? Ah, professionalism :)

@Milkman said:

@GreggD said:

@Milkman said:

I don't agree with disabling them but the comments are treated with disdain because they deserve it. Just look at them. It's ridiculous. It's not everyone obviously but it's just a select few horrible people who ruin it for everyone.

I saw you arguing with everyone who disagreed with the article, including the ones that actually had solid points.

I didn't say there was no discussion to be had in them. But the idiotic ridiculous comments like the guy who said "these girls are probably just insecure about boobs because they're fat" or the guy calling people "libtards" overshadow the meaningful discussion and leave a smoldering mess of disgusting internet.

Don't respond to those then? They were the minority of posts in that topic. If I look through that topic, I see a ton of reasonable well thought out arguments, and everybody just only responding to the terrible ones.

@AlisterCat said:

Censorship through disabling comments is not the way. Dissenting opinions need to be expressed so they can be refuted and shamed.

or laughed at, depending on who you're talking to

You can't "fix" assholes on the Internet

@Branthog said:

@GrantHeaslip said:

Given what the GB staff have been saying about the article comments lately, I’ve got to ask: why do they still exist? It’s pretty clear they see little to no value in comments, and whenever they come up, the sentiment is “ugh, the internet sucks.”

Setting aside how unfair it is for the staff to paint the entire community with a simple brush — especially when there’s a lot of interesting, thoughtful responses that are being totally ignored — it’s on some level their responsibility to try to improve things. Maybe that means only letting premium members comment, connecting comments to Facebook accounts, using up a voting system, setting and enforcing higher standards, or doing something besides sitting on the sidelines and saying “well, that’s the internet, what can you do?” It’s your site! You can do whatever you want! Nobody’s forcing you to just grit your teeth and endure this aspect of your site you clearly don’t think is working.

Not liking comments is entirely valid, but talking shit about comments while directly profiting from them and not addressing the underlying problems isn’t. This is a problem other sites have solved (or at least mitigated) — Giant Bomb can as well.

It's not unique to GB. Game journalists treating their audience with total disdain and complete dismissal and antagonism is pretty much par for the course, across the entire swath of them, these days. I have never seen a group of "journalists" that have such a general disgust for their audience as game journalists. And they pretty much continue to push the same sort of group-think where they use podcasts and other venues to chastise entire swaths of their readership. I'm sure you've heard them say things essentially to the fact that if you have any other opinion on, say, the torso thing other than "the people behind the torso are sick monsters bordering on rapists who are making rape culture okay and blah blah blah" you are a braindead neanderthal who should go shoot himself in his mom's basement. There seems to be little middle ground in most of their comments. Either you buy along with the exact same playbook of butt-hurt that they have from point A to point B or you're the worse of the worst and classified as "that part of the internet". Frankly, it turns me off that their response tends to be so simpleminded and lacking variance.

If these guys are so disgusted with the opinions of much of their readership, then ban us. Delete us. Delete our comments. Delete the whole comment and forum sections. I mean, you've already shown utter disgust at anyone who goes out of their way to participate in discussions that you instigate, so just go all the way. Of course, the comments and the community are often the only place you will hear anything different than the same old bullshit that every game journalist spits out, too. It's almost like the community has to be a separate journalist entity unto themselves to provide alternate views of things, because the "journalists" sure as fuck are rarely interested in that.

And then, they wonder why the readership has such a confrontational relationship with game journalists and why we regard them with so little respect. It's a two way street.

(Mind you, I'm not saying there aren't truly hideous things said out there that are just unfathomable and almost even unbelievable. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who merely play devil's advocate or even approach something from a different perspective than the agreed-upon group-think view of all of gaming journalism. Ermagherd! You're not instantly calling for Silver-whatever's heads on a throne or their castration - you are a hideous chauvinist pig that probably beats his wife and gropes women on public transit! durp durp durp! Forum comments are so disgusting, I'm going to lift my dainty white skirt up as I jump away from the filthy comment section!".)

So. Fuck 'em.

Exaggerate much? If you're trying to make a point, avoid gross exaggeration and hyperbole, it'll help start a discussion. They've never said anything remotely like that. Here's the thing, they're allowed to have their opinion just as much as every other person on this website does. Our forum for discussion is exactly that, the forum, this is where we post our thoughts and our opinions. The staff are able to do so on podcasts/videos etc, so why is it that somebody in the forum has every right to disagree with what's being said as loudly and immaturely as possible (and no I'm not saying everyone who disagrees is like that) but the guys can't voice their opinion about it? You know what, there's a lot of shitty comments in those stories. A lot. I'll be honest if I were in their position and I had a buch of people telling me I'm a sensationalizing talentless hack who posts click bait articles then yeah I'd think a lot of those people are assholes. If you want the right to voice your opinion then saying they don't have the right to do the same is stupid.

@Breadfan said:

Giant Bomb ain't no dictatorship.

It sort of is.

Anyway, if we disabled comments then we'd quickly run out of assholes to ban. Where is the fun in that?

@MB: 'Sup, MB.

@GrantHeaslip said:

@HerbieBug said:

Also, comment sections substantially increase the repeat traffic through the site, most especially if there is heated debate that results in many many users making many many clickety clicks. :)

Sure, but that seems like the opposite of what Giant Bomb’s supposed to stand for.

HAHAAHA are you serious? Every website's goal is to get as many clicks. What drugs are you smoking friend?

I'm a fan of the votes system. I don't want to spend all day combing through the threads just to get to a couple quality comments, and seeing the result of cracked.com's system of implementing votes AND a sorting by votes option, it tends to bring the best comments to the top. Sure there are probably some good comments that get lost in the shit pile but I'd rather see solely well thought out or entertaining comments and have a few lost rather than sift though the swaths of mindless, typo-filled comments with nothing to add.

@RollingZeppelin: Those systems get abused far too often. Back when the album Ten was released for Rock Band, I commented on the Gamespot story about its announcement that though I liked the album, I didn't think it would translate well to RB. I got downvoted to oblivion. Almost 100, if memory serves.

I don't know if it needs to be fix but whenever Patrick writes about anything serious the comment section becomes a cluttered mess. Some of the comments in those threads are very mean spirited but what can be done about it? Can we silence people from saying their mind, regardless if their thoughts offend. Maybe, I suppose. The one rule here is meant to be "don't be a dick".

I would like Giantbomb to get more involved with the users. I think they are grateful for all their fans but can come across as not caring about the forums here. A community I quite like. Even if the dark side of it comes out on news storys some times. Usually it is civil around here.

@RollingZeppelin said:

I'm a fan of the votes system. I don't want to spend all day combing through the threads just to get to a couple quality comments, and seeing the result of cracked.com's system of implementing votes AND a sorting by votes option, it tends to bring the best comments to the top. Sure there are probably some good comments that get lost in the shit pile but I'd rather see solely well thought out or entertaining comments and have a few lost rather than sift though the swaths of mindless, typo-filled comments with nothing to add.

I look forward to the day when I can read the following top-rated post beneath a Giant Bomb video: "12 people didn't slice the pie LOL LOL LOL."

The "problem" is the front-page presence of biased, judgmental articles that become inflammatory. The staff lead by example, and they've set some pretty poor precedents lately. The kind of wars we see in the comment section reflect this.

You can't change the commenters. You can censor them, via voting (which will just crush minority opinions) or outright removal (such as bans), but they'll be the same people. The staff can, however, direct what they're talking about into more positive ways that don't result in routine firestorms.

The fact is that the staff have complete disdain for the users that keep them afloat. At this point I'd say they should eliminate comments. They don't care and the only time they even come up are to talk about how terrible everyone on this site is.

I'm at the point where I believe that Patrick only aims to write about things to get as many comments as he can, tomorrow is 1,000 comments and 8 Women, 8 Limbs, what ever the article is called

@Nightriff said:

I'm at the point where I believe that Patrick only aims to write about things to get as many comments as he can, tomorrow is 1,000 comments and 8 Women, 8 Limbs, what ever the article is called

Well he prides himself on the fact that he's a troll.

@GreggD said:

@RollingZeppelin: Those systems get abused far too often. Back when the album Ten was released for Rock Band, I commented on the Gamespot story about its announcement that though I liked the album, I didn't think it would translate well to RB. I got downvoted to oblivion. Almost 100, if memory serves.

Ok that's one example of the good (if not uninteresting, sorry :P) comments getting lost in the crap. But, for the most part the system on cracked generally yields good results. I'd say it's worth a try at least.

@RollingZeppelin: Those systems get abused far too often. Back when the album Ten was released for Rock Band, I commented on the Gamespot story about its announcement that though I liked the album, I didn't think it would translate well to RB. I got downvoted to oblivion. Almost 100, if memory serves.

@Giantstalker said:

The "problem" is the front-page presence of biased, judgmental articles that become inflammatory. The staff lead by example, and they've set some pretty poor precedents lately. The kind of wars we see in the comment section reflect this.

You can't change the commenters. You can censor them, via voting (which will just crush minority opinions) or outright removal (such as bans), but they'll be the same people. The staff can, however, direct what they're talking about into more positive ways that don't result in routine firestorms.

So don't post anything vaguely controversial on a website that was founded on being an editorial voice with a heavy emphasis on staff personalities and opinions?

@JoshyLee: Where are you seeing the staff hating on the commenters? Just curious.

@Wrighteous86 said:

So don't post anything vaguely controversial on a website that was founded on being an editorial voice with a heavy emphasis on staff personalities?

As a writer, trust me on this one: you never know what's going to end up being controversial.

The thing that is annoying to me is them dismissing anything negative as "Durrrrr the internet!" When, yes there are some people that are just straight up shit sacks. However and I think I can speak for many people here on this issue there are a growing contigent of us who aren't "Patrick Haters" that are genuinely just annoyed with his articles recently putting his personal slant into everything. If he would just drop the bullshit and say "this is an opinion peice" then it might not be so much of an issue but when he is trying to present "news" stories.

Thing is anytime someone tries to critique his writing it just ends up with everyone dismissing any criticisms as "patrick haters" or just people being jerks. I think there is validity to calling people out on their bullshit if you actually have a point.

@RollingZeppelin said:

@JoshyLee: Where are you seeing the staff hating on the commenters? Just curious.

Do you listen to the cast? If the community is brought up at all, it's in a negative way.

@Milkman said:

@GreggD said:

@RollingZeppelin: Those systems get abused far too often. Back when the album Ten was released for Rock Band, I commented on the Gamespot story about its announcement that though I liked the album, I didn't think it would translate well to RB. I got downvoted to oblivion. Almost 100, if memory serves.

When the site first launched, it had a plus and minus system for comments but they scrapped it for exactly that reason. I would be fine with just a plus system without the minus though or something like Facebook where I can "like" a comment.

And so would I. When you have the ability to downvote, you end up with a comments section like the one on xbox360achievements.org. Man, what a shit show.

I think that you should keep them but have them monitored more closely. Just because a certain group is flipping out because of something is not entirely bad. That is their opinion, it is how this is done that in the case at hand HAS been bad. I say do not monitor exactly what they are saying but how they are saying it.

@RollingZeppelin said:

I'm a fan of the votes system. I don't want to spend all day combing through the threads just to get to a couple quality comments, and seeing the result of cracked.com's system of implementing votes AND a sorting by votes option, it tends to bring the best comments to the top. Sure there are probably some good comments that get lost in the shit pile but I'd rather see solely well thought out or entertaining comments and have a few lost rather than sift though the swaths of mindless, typo-filled comments with nothing to add.

I look forward to the day when I can read the following top-rated post beneath a Giant Bomb video: "12 people didn't slice the pie LOL LOL LOL."

@JoshyLee: Last one I listened to they were joking about how the community is argumentative because the guys are all argumentative too. Seemed really lighthearted, and honestly sometimes this community does suck, so I wouldn't disagree. It'd be cool to get a specific example of the dudes hating on the community, just to get some perspective (and maybe a little catharsis).

@JoshyLee said:

@RollingZeppelin said:

@JoshyLee: Where are you seeing the staff hating on the commenters? Just curious.

Do you listen to the cast? If the community is brought up at all, it's in a negative way.

Post some examples to actually make your point.