Paying for comments

Should Giant Bomb charge to comment on Giant Bomb articles/forums/blogs? With the number of forum posts that are ads, as well as the hateful comments, it seeming like raising the barrier to entry just a little would help curb the nonsense. I know that is what Pete Dodd has based his site off of, the content is 100% free (no ads), but you have to pay for a subscription to post on the forums. Now prominent YouTubers like: Felix Kjellberg (Pewdiepie) and John Bain (Totalbiscuit) have discussed only allowing paying users to post comments to keep the scummy stuff out. I don’t want to make it battle of the haves vs the have nots, but a small fee that covers the life of the account would may stop some of the BS. I'm not saying people should be silenced, but II think that if there was a fee involved, people would be more tactful (or maybe not). So, should there be a one time fee, for the life of the account, to comment'

I guess I see Twitter going this way too. It's free to tweet, until you want to tweet to a verified account or something like that, then it takes a subscription. Want to tweet at Gary Whitta reminding him that Apple products are made with slave labor and Apple doesn't pay US taxes... it'll cost you, and you'll get blocked.

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Kevin Smith did a similar thing on his site years ago. He was being flooded with people just giving him abuse and posting hate speech in the forums, so he made it so you had to pay 1 dollar to register. It worked with his site, because the forum regulars were a close knit bunch. But, it kills all extra traffic.

While the bots are annoying, they are moderated fairly quickly. In fact, there is always a mod available on the GB forums and trolls etc get dealt with pretty quickly. I don't think it's that much of a problem, and certainly not worth putting the ability to give feedback behind a paywall, however small a charge it may be.

No, it's not like someone who buys premium is somehow immune to posting horrible things.

I will say I think it does make some sense for chat. There the speed of communication makes it much harder to mod effectively and therefore an attractive target for trolls.

Something Awful has done this with their $10 registration fee. While some of their communities are as toxic as the rest of the internet, a lot of users are less likely to go get themselves banned since it means ponying up more cash to get back in.

NeoGAF opted for a long winded and effort heavy registration process with the intent that they want to avoid frivolous accounts, but we all know what that community is like, regardless.

I remember the time when people cheated in counter-strike 1.6, got banned, got themself a new copy of half life, punched in the serial number and kept on cheating. so no, even a money barrier wont stop people from being dicks if they like being dicks.

Giant Bomb has a team of moderators and a lot less comments to deal with, it's not the same as a youtuber banning comments.

Alternatively, a 24 hour cooldown period after registration, before being able to post on the forums could also be worth considering. It'd throw a wrench in some/most bots logic, and people would have some time to calm down instead of posting gut reactions to shit.

I think it would drive away a lot of the non-trolly commenters as well. At least personally, I occasionally leave comments on videos I like, but if a website introduced a premium comment section, I'd just go "You know, I don't care that much about leaving a comment." I suppose it wouldn't matter too much on GB in particular, since I already have a premium account for the videos.

@sharkethic: I very much doubt that would change anything at all.

In lieu of paying to post on Pewdiepie's videos, I'd happily pay to never his face and or videos on my youtube ever again.

Also no that's a terrible idea.

@steadyingmeat: Okay..?

I feel like that would drop the forums to a singular-thinking, one opinion insular society. It's ok to do, because Giant Bomb is a private enterprise, but it would still be a bummer.

For what it's worth as a newbie, I was lurking here last week when I discovered the forum and it seems like a great community.

Punishing the masses because of a few horribly-minded people is never a good solution. Also, I, and I imagine many other regular posters, would have never been motivated to subscribe at all without being able to engage with this awesome community for free at the start.

That being said, live chat is a complete mess and should absolutely be separated.

I would rather give everyone the benefit of the doubt and then deal with trolls and spammers as they come up, rather than assuming no one has anything worthwhile or interesting to say unless they pay.

I think this is kind of my take away on this. It'd get rid of the bots, which are kind of not that big of a deal really. But there are plenty of aggressive psychos who're more than willing to part with a few bucks to spew their crazy nonsense. I'm sure some of them exist on this site. Our mods are mostly pretty good anyway. And I've gotten pretty good at not biting on the posts the crazy people make. Usually if I ignore them, the threads are gone before I see it again.

I do hate some of the people who sign up here just to push their agenda regarding their opinions regarding the feminism in games stuff or whatevermainly because i feel like they don't want to be part of the community. Sometimes I wish you could block new users from posting in controversial threads.

In saying that what I think a paid forum or threads is not a good idea. I go to a paid forum for wrestling and the community is worse then here in some aspects. money doesn't make someone not suck. its all about personality.

unrelated arent all people who watch pewdiepies videos no older then 14? you cant get a credit card at that age. i kid. i kid.

You have to pay to @ verified twitter accounts? What?

Yes, that would kill the forums once and for all.

I don't think it's too bad. Most things are modded fairly quickly. I rarely see spam, but when I do see it I flag the crap out of it. The hateful stuff is just part of life, I don't condone it but I let people be who they are. Sometimes you gotta just let a-holes be a-holes, they eventually weed themselves out.

One thing I will say, is most users should do their part as well and flag the flagrant stuff to help the mods out.

I have zero problems with anything posted on this site. I also have no interest in engaging with an elitist group who've coughed up the dosh to post in their own echo chamber.

Yeah, I appreciate the sentiment, but I think it's better to leave it open. The moderation team does a great job.

No. In fact i think this forum is already too insular. There seems to be an inexplicably pervasive knee jerk towards calling for post deletions and thread locks amongst the clientele here. Inexplicable because this is a fringe alternative game site, or used to be anyway. Recently the forum has turned in to a great deal of whining about the presence of dissenting opinion.

Yeah... I am with the people that thinks it would stagnate open conversation.

Also, many of this threads are about pretty trivial stuff. Even when I don't go into hateful comments territory, I would think twice if I have to pay to answer on many of them.

Besides, this community is fairly civil, all things considered; and the moderators are doing a good job...

The "Can't remember the name of this game" thread would get cut in half if people had to pay to post.

I don't think it's an invalid thing for a site to do to put that kind of barrier up. I know people have called this "elitist" before, and I do think it creates some worrying divides between the "haves" and "have nots" but with the quality of communication on most video game forums I can see why people would say "We respect our users and we need to make their experience better than that". All that being said I only think that works for a certain kind of site and it does not work for this site. Giant Bomb has always tried to be a place that's welcome and opening, and frankly I think it's better this way.

Moderation, at least moderation that doesn't require comment approval in the first place, is not a complete alternative to a paywall. I think both provide a deterrent to bad posts on a site, but in terms of their direct application a paywall is more about preventing bad comments getting there in the first place, whereas a lot of our practical work is about cleaning up the crappy posts after they've already been made and some of the damage has already been done. However, I think as things are, the openness we get from a lack of a paywall is worth that cost, and that a lot of the problem is solved by having enough moderators and taking a diligent stand against people in any way being jerks in discussion areas of the site. While I do also believe that paywalls act as an effective deterrent to an extent, there are still so many people with plenty of cash or dedication to sites like this one who will still make posts that damage discussion or violate the rules. Ultimately I think the big change that needs to happen is the gaming community just sorting outself out a bit more.

Thanks for all the praise for the mod team in here. I don't want anyone to wave away people being jerks or generally unconstructive discussion on this or any other site because I believe these are serious problems that deserve attention, but I think my fellow mods are doing a great job and we do try our best.

I could see that perhaps being helpful, at least as a load off the moderators, but I also think it could be problematic.

For one thing, I've seen plenty of terrible posts from subscribers, and usually, if they are a subscriber, we're gonna see even more of those posts than a normal non-subscriber. So, while bad posts from non-subscribers can be an issue, it isn't one that has bothered me as much over the years as bad subscriber posts.

Secondly, I worry it may raise the burden of proof on moderating someone. It has already felt like subscribers are less readily moderated than non-subscribers, perhaps with good reason. Moderators seem to need to be especially certain about a subscriber being terrible to take action against them. If you added that your subscription provides the ability to comment instead of it simply being a benefit of signing up for free, it may put even more pressure on moderators to not strip someone of what they may have paid for. I mean, if someone paid for a month partly because they wanted to comment, and then their commenting privileges were suspended for two weeks of that month, wouldn't that seem a bit problematic? And then, if you banned someone from commenting, they would no longer have one of the incentives to subscribe. I could see even more pressure to give those people a dozen chances before finally getting rid of them.

Third, I am concerned it might undermine the open nature of the site's community. I have been subscribed for a long time, but I know plenty of regulars who have come on harder times and not felt they could afford subscribing. At least, they could still be part of the site anyway. Not everyone can always spend the money to support the site, and that's okay. They can still join in on this silly fun like anyone else. Giant Bomb shouldn't be an upper class of gamer that can afford it; Giant Bomb is a fun, welcome place for folks who like dumb shit and videogames.

I would understand this kind of change if it was made, but I think it could have some unfortunate unintended consequences.

Don't think we need that, not at this stage. I feel like GB is kept pretty clean. How many hateful comments do you really see on a day-to-day basis? Maybe I'm dodging those threads accidentally. I mean yeah, people rarely agree about anything it seems but snideness is way more common here than.. you know.. hateful comments.