Popular Science is closing comments on its articles, Citing "trolls and spambots"

[G_j]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/25/popular-science-youtube-comments

Popular Science kills comments - while YouTube tries to fix them

Website says comments harm debate, while YouTube begins integration with Google+ to bring friends and 'popular personalities' to greater visibility - and hide random remarks

Wednesday 25 September 2013 08.42 EDT

Popular Science is closing comments on its articles. Citing "trolls and spambots", the 141-year-old American magazine has decided that an open forum at the bottom of articles "can be bad for science".

The decision was "not made lightly" said online content director Suzanne LaBarre - nor, appropriately, without some supporting scientific evidence. Citing research from a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Dominique Brossard, the magazine argues that exposure to bad comments can skew a reader's opinion of the post itself.

"Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought," Brossard wrote in the New York Times.

"If you carry out those results to their logical end," says LaBarre, "commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded – you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch."

..more..

[SheilaT]

1. I'm sorry to see that.

But all too often I see totally stupid comments on articles everywhere. It makes the worst of DU look like Platonic dialogue.

[G_j]

2. world gone mad..

there are no doubt people who now think gravity is a left wing conspiracy.

[SheilaT]

4. After all, it is

JUST a theory!

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. I Support Their Decision

Without comment the articles can stand on their own. The RW cannot throw in all these straw dog arguments to influence people who are educating themselves and are still susceptible to being wrongly influenced.

Reachable people need time to assimilate what they are reading or learning. It takes time to build some core knowledge understand some more complicated concepts. RWingers hate it when a person builds a good background. If they can challenge and raise doubts about obvious core knowledge they can lie and distort with more success.

I do not believe that we need to hear the other side on all issues. There some ideas that are so nonsensical and absurd they do NOT deserve any kind of balanced airing. I am willing to shut off a right winger and even mock them and really deny them their say in the same way to deny me by shouting me down.

We are not in a debate but a war. Every time I watch a show the right winger is shouting down and interrupting the other person. It is a wonder that these rude hateful interrupting right wingers do not get a knuckle sandwich they are so aggressive. Too many times the host lets such behavior pass..

Liberals can play their game as well. Right wingers succeed because liberals allow them to game them without retaliation.

[G_j]

5. +1