So, The Guardian did a study of comments left on its website...

[cyberswede]

Not surprising, of course, but interesting.

The dark side of Guardian comments

As part of a series on the rising global phenomenon of online harassment, the Guardian commissioned research into the 70m comments left on its site since 2006 and discovered that of the 10 most abused writers eight are women, and the two men are black. Hear from three of those writers, explore the data and help us host better conversations online

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/the-dark-side-of-guardian-comments

The article also includes a quiz where readers can vote whether they would block or allow certain sample comments.

[Odin2005]

1. Never read the comments on a news site, they are always terrible.

Shit like GamerGate doesn't help, so many misogynistic losers in their parents basements with nothing better to do that spew shit in the comments.

[cyberswede]

8. I don't read them either

Because, frankly, I don't really care what random people think. LOL

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Interesting to take their quiz, since it's like being on a jury

I disagreed with them on one question - so, I suppose, 'spoiler' below if people want to do the quiz without my opinion possibly altering their thoughts.


On the question about soccer (Mourinho, if you haven't heard of him, is a famous and sometimes controversial soccer manager), I thought they should have left it. They regarded it as 'author abuse' and 'beyond reasonable criticism of the piece to smear both the Guardian and the journalist'. I, however, regard the the language used about the author and Guardian as fit to be used in parliament. It calls Mourinho 'the despicable one', which is more insulting than what they said about The Guardian or the author; but Mourinho called himself 'the special one' once, and I think this is acceptable satire. Interesting that they're more sensitive about themselves than Mourinho, though.

My general feeling on their other explanations is that they seem pretty sensitive to any criticism, with them saying they'd allow it but call it 'mild trolling'. That, for instance, was how they classed "Oh dear. Can I award you the Oscar for the clunkiest metaphor in a wrong-headed Oscar-themed click-bait article?". Which, frankly, is no worse than what Guardian writers say in the articles.

[cyberswede]

9. I disagreed with them on that same comment

The others were obvious, and did remind me of DU jury duty

I agree that they seem pretty sensitive to any criticism, but I actually support their blocking based on "author abuse," as it seems like a reasonable attempt to promote civil discourse (that is, getting rod of comments that attack the messenger rather than arguing the topic of the article).

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. I can see there is a point where it becomes 'author abuse'

but I think being questioned whether they should get paid for producing an article is pretty much an occupational hazard when you're publishing amateur replies to it.

I can see there's not much point in, say, telling an economics writer "you're a useless economist" if that's all the comment says, but if it proceeds to say why they are (with arguments about economics), in the commenter's opinion, then I don't think it's abuse.

[cyberswede]

17. Good point

I agree with this::

"I think being questioned whether they should get paid for producing an article is pretty much an occupational hazard"

[bemildred]

3. Lots of people like to dump on other people to make themselves feel good.

And on the innertubes, it is "safe". No obvious consequences.

Very popular on DU in primary season, because everybody is upset.

(All who attack me now will self-identify at THAT KIND OF PEOPLE.)

[cyberswede]

10. Yes, the safety of anonymity...

plus the "camaraderie" generated when people join in to pile on someone else. This is definitely true of DU primary season - as demonstrated in pretty much every single post in GDP.

[bemildred]

11. I always feel dirty when I go down there.

[pampango]

4. "articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men"

New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.

Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.

How should digital news organisations respond to this? Some say it is simple – “Don’t read the comments” or, better still, switch them off altogether. And many have done just that, disabling their comment threads for good because they became too taxing to bother with. But in so many cases journalism is enriched by responses from its readers. So why disable all comments when only a small minority is a problem?

Very interesting. It seems that only 3 of the 10 most trolled journalists were straight white men even though they were the majority of journalists. And the 10 least trolled - all men.

It is POSSIBLE that women or non-whites or gays often write more insightful, liberal articles that provoke more reaction from right wing trolls. (IMHO most trolls are conservative in nature.) It does seem more likely that minority journalists elicit more reaction regardless of what they write.

It would be interesting to see the exact same article credited to two different journalists - one a straight, white male and one a non-white lesbian - and see how the reactions of trolls differed. (I'm not sure such a test would be scientifically valid or ethical since the Guardian would be lying about who wrote an article.)

[cyberswede]

14. I think bloggers/Twitter posters have done this, sort of

I seem to recall reading an article on DU about it.

A quick Google search shows:

IT HAPPENED TO ME: I Posed As A Man On Twitter And Nobody Called Me Fat or Threatened To Rape Me For Once
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/26/it-happened-to-me-i-posed_n_6946840.html

10 Creepy Lessons a Man Learned While Pretending to Be a Woman On the Internet
http://www.ryot.org/pretending-to-be-woman-on-internet/928466

[malaise]

5. Read it - it was a good idea

but no surprise - women and minorities

[Denzil_DC]

7. Being a vaguely left-of-center paper,

you'd maybe expect the Guardian's comments sections to reflect that. But it's not been the case for many years, if ever, from what I've seen (and I gave up on all but the occasional predictably mindboggling dip into Comment Is Free long ago).

The moderation is unpredictable, trolls take up residency, social media links to stories which then attract those who particularly have something derogatory to say, the signal to noise ratio becomes ridiculously unproductive, and few, if any, minds are ever changed.

[cyberswede]

15. Yeah...

except I think RW trolls would be drawn to a left-leaning paper, in order to maximize their jerkhood. And social media is definitely used to send out a "bat-signal" of sorts to articles about certain topics.

I've seen in happen on DU in my time on MIRT - all of a sudden, a bunch of newbies sign up & all post the same sort of crap in the same thread.

[alarimer]

13. Ban anonymity for newspaper comment sections.

I think it is the anonymity on the internet that prevents accountability. And possibly also restrict commenting to actual subscribers. You know, people who pay to access the newspaper's website and not just sign up to make comments. I don't see how it's possible to police the comments section without some way to identify the worst abusers and hold them accountable. Right now, they just sign up under a different name and keep going.

I understand there are issues with banning anonymity altogether. I wouldn't call for it here, for instance, but then there are rules against abuse that are enforced here, so it is not as much of an issue.

[cyberswede]

16. Our local paper tied comments to Facebook profiles a while back

Their theory was that people would be more civil if they weren't anonymous. Alas, people were still jerks, and got personal with each other in little comment battles.

Any story with a racial component had to have comments disabled from the start.