Then the hack: this is a newspaper. They have no reason to be fair. Give community moderators super-credibility. So they can upvote people and not just give their comment visibility, but by upvoting they incidentally give them credibility for future comments. And in turn, those commenters' upvotes are more powerful as well, thanks to the credibility lent by the community mods.

It creates an echo-chamber, of course... but ultimately, that's what people want.

I want to eat ice cream every day, but I also want to feel good and be healthy.

Let's give people a little credit--if they're aware of their biases and are given tools to overcome them, a lot of folks might make the right choice.

Also - regardless of how great their new system is, the old adage holds: "Garbage in, garbage out."

I'm libertarian, and vote all over the map, but likely lean more liberal. I know plenty of well educated, employed conservatives. But, a bulk of voters in Trump's corner are not you. It's like going to a Free Speech rally. Some people are likely there just for speech, but if Neo-Nazis show up, and cause a ruckus, they're the face of the movement. Same goes for Antifa and taking over other peaceful protests. So, I think the disenfranchised, middle of the country, uneducated, unemployed person is simply the face of the cause. Unfortunately, some people only see things at face value.

Why do you assume that's inherently a good thing?

EDIT: And if you're interested in learning about the constitution, I strongly recommend starting with Hillsdale College's free 'constitution minute' series ( https://constitutionminute.hillsdale.edu/home ), and if you like that, trying out their free 'constitution 101' series ( https://online.hillsdale.edu/course/con101/schedule )

But why would people need different healthcare based on different states? Or education? Or food? That never made sense to me.

Now, why would people need different healthcare based on different states?

Not everyone agrees with your definition of what constitutes "need" as it relates to healthcare, education or food. And while populations are rarely if ever completely homogenous, it would be absurd to say there aren't significant cultural values that are largely shared based on geography.

Don't worry, it's more of a rhetorical question than one seeking an answer.

1) The federal government sucks up all of the money -- see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Federal,_State,_and_Local... . And that chart only encompasses income tax -- the overall federal tax rate is closer to 20% GDP. The average person in the US already works until April 24 each year just to pay taxes (if you were to take your all of your taxes and pay them at the beginning of the year). Higher income earners already work well over half the year to pay taxes.

2) People only want these things if somebody else is paying for it. 'Free' healthcare and college tuition seem a lot less 'free' if your property tax (or rent, if your don't own -- landlords still have to pay tax, after all) and/or state income tax suddenly jump by a large percentage to cover it. People are usually very happy to spend somebody else's money (the battle cry is "the rich", but the reality is more like "our children's"), but not their own. Local and state governments have less borrowing capacity than the feds and don't control the currency, so it's harder to obscure the true cost of these things.

3) A lot of people don't actually want them. Although large population centers (which hold a lot of sway at the federal level) tend to favor these things, much of the USA geographically does not. Massachusetts, for instance, already had something very similar to Obamacare (in fact, large parts of Obamacare were based on Massachusetts' "Romneycare" law), but it would have been a cold day in hell before a state like North Dakota passed something like that.

"The average person works until April 24 to pay for things like schools, healthcare, rule of law, roads and trains, internet, etc...".

When people's needs are satisfied, they want more of that.

So let's satisfy their needs instead. Echo chambers are ultimately self-defeating as they bring on more divisiveness and intolerance.

But they are excellent at driving activity => pageviews. Which is where the money for newspapers comes from. Nothing to be said beyond that - the induction of outrage and divisiveness is a desired feature, not a bug, from the POV of media companies.

And, really, what is Facebook but Internet commenting on baby and cat photos of people you are related to in some form (by choice or by birth).

If we accept that humans are social creatures, and social media is able to connect people, then it is possible to say Internet comment sections are able to fulfill some needs that people have. Displaced football fans working far from home may not be able to find a local group that also supports their home team in a far away place, but there's a digital clubhouse for the displaced fan's home team somewhere on the Internet.

This may not satisfy a need like food or water, but people organized into geographically-based, sometimes tightly-knit communities before the Internet. That modern technology allows us to organize into loose-knit communities through the use of "Internet comment sections" is to realize J.C.R. Licklider's dream of an inter-networked computer system.

People (at least some people) tend toward the need for discourse to temper and test their ideas. I mean, you're commenting on HN.

It's the guidelines. By writing guidelines that promote useful discourse you allow everyone involved to learn more about their own biases and shortcomings.

Every person that writes their opinion grows when reading the varied responses (as long as they're open to other people's perspectives).

That's pretty much it. Once the population gets too big and the level of discourse too low, the intelligent people will move to greener pastures with better signal:noise ratios. Slashdot's moderation system didn't save them, and HN's moderation system won't either.

I've yet to see a comment system that promotes signal:noise ratio over groupthink.

Doesn't every groupthink community describe themselves as "Smarter and more insightful commentators"? I'm pretty sure Trump or Clinton voter websites consider their signal-to-noise high and everyone else's low.

And your comment really rather touches on it.

Peoples' needs aren't as profitable -- not until what they need also becomes what they want.

separate buttons for "this is a good/bad argument" and "i agree/disagree with this"

then give more voice to people whose votes on these two axes are orthogonal.

this rewards policing bad arguments on your side, or finding good arguments on the other side.

to gain visibilty, need to vote "good argument, but i disagree" or "bad argument, but i agree with the conclusion"

a naked 'good argument' or 'i agree vote' costs a small amount of karma.

a 'i agree, good argument', costs a large amount of karma, because those votes should be rare.

Done right, it will allow diversity of opinion without turning the comment section into an unreadable ranting mess.

Do you really want to read a commentator who post the same screed about republicians or democrats on every story?

What I'd love is to see a tool that allows you to see fact from opinion and the ability to see multiple perspectives.

In Australia there's a government run TV channel that have programs that attempt this. Good journalism is hard to find though.

As technologists we've built this system that optimises for page views. Surely we're capable of building a system that optimises for the truth instead.

Are there site that do that? I know hackernews limits your voting abilities until you get so much karma.

Sounds like some variation of the above ideas would work great. The vote from a random troll who doesn't understand the community's rules shouldn't count as much as other votes but I'm not sure how you would implement it in a way that wouldn't be abused.

Not news or commenting related, but a site like Newgrounds [0] (i.e. flash games and videos) has this feature. As you participate in the community more and contribute high-quality ratings, enforcement, etc. you gain more influence, making your votes carry more weight. Therefore an account that has been involved with the site for some time may carry more weight than a few new troll accounts.

It seems like a good model, but may still need occasional moderator intervention to prevent abuse here and there.

[0] http://www.newgrounds.com/

Not sure how the results were used though.

It's a way to police the moderators, a great concept at least, though it gets tiresome at times.

I wonder if a similar system would work where 1) regular users vote as normal 2) moderators who strictly stick to community guidelines vote (e.g. vote up comments that add to the discussion, vote down trolls, silly jokes and rude comments) 3) only votes from people whose votes are consistent with the moderators are weighted heavily.

Maybe you could even be rewarded with karma when a moderator agrees with you to encourage it instead of it being hidden. Obviously all these systems are open to abuse and problems but just throwing out ideas.

Someone on the team got annoyed by this so for a while we would post the top comment before publishing such that they couldn't post their personal fundraising link. Then we ran some numbers and realized how much money it was costing the campaign (a lot).

Moral of the story: comment sections are weird.

I don't miss them. I'm sure commentcowboy236523 from Atlanta has some important things to say, but I don't need to read them. If I want conversation, I'll come to a place like Hacker News or reddit, where conversation is the goal. I can find that when I want it.

But I don't need it when I'm trying to relax and enjoy the paper. Comments simply don't add any value to the experience. We don't need better comments. We don't need them at all.

Comments tell me "what's wrong with the article", and in doing so, give you a good picture of what the article is about.

As for the "what's wrong" part itself: generally speaking, you can really tell by how the comment is written whether it's legit or not. That way, you kinda get two sides of the coin, and you can decide for yourself what's going on.

Whether comments are valuable very much depends on the kind of people you have writing them, and I believe it's worth trying to maintain a good commenting community.

But that was kind of my point; by looking at the way a response to a piece of content is written, you can judge its merit somewhat accurately.

For example, on a video about the way the Suicide Squad movie was edited, you might see:

- "BRILLIANT 100% agree!"

- "While I think you're right, there might be a couple of things you missed out on [...]"

- "FU M8 DA MOVIE WAS AWESUM!!!1@2"

Each of these comments tells you something different. And yes, some say more about the audience than the content ;)

Would just as soon not give armchair phd a platform. There's some research (don't feel like pulling it up - bullshit?) that talks about how the decline of valuing expertise has had some negative social consequences, but that's probably obvious.

At Slashdot, chances are that I haven't read the article. I go straight to the comments and read those.

Curiously, I can't do that as often here on HN. Here, the quality of article is often higher and the comments are usually more on-topic and, often, more specialized. I do end up reading many more threads than I comment in.

But, yes... I learn a lot more from the comments (frequently) than I ever do from the article. HN is particularly good at this, and it's one of the reasons I visit.

I think "forums" like reddit and HN are fundamentally different from inline comments on news websites.

We have already seen examples where people run the same story on extreme left and extreme right web sites to get clicks and rage views and their toning, and changes are fairly algorithmic. That makes me wonder if you could build an echo chamber of one. So that what you read was always something you really agreed with, even if it wasn't written that way for anyone else. (same data and facts mind you, just slanting it toward the reader's preferences).

I'm similar. You could think of articles as one giant comment from a single person. I'd rather read comments from several people as it's much easier to spot bias and get a variety of viewpoints.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/us/elections/to-our-reade...

> ...we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.

I've taken a different approach, which I don't think is superior to yours, just more enjoyable for me... I intentionally watch openly biased news aggregators. For left wing commentary I will watch The Young Turks or Jimmy Dore. For right wing commentary I like Ben Shapiro. The truth usually lies somewhere in between.

Oh, I notice it. I think it's a fun game to root out the bias in the Times. It's really how the news is meant to be read (i.e. confrontationally).

> We feel that rather than approaching the problem with a collection of algorithms and an army of moderators, our engineering and editorial resources are better utilised building new storytelling formats that resonate with our audience.

Modern media do this every day already with their yellow-journalist hit pieces, biased comments to drive a narrative aren't even a skip away from that.

Then again, I would be shocked if PACs of all flavors didn't have pay groups of subscribers to crash the comments sections of the most prominent publications (NYT, WSJ, etc). Especially during the primaries last year. When you consider the amount of traffic they get, the top comment is valuable thought capital real estate during election season.

I agree about Socrates. Overwrought.

I don't read WaPo comments anymore, the signal/noise ratio is too poor. I learn something occasionally from NYT comments.

It's down to an organization's willingness to spend money on quality. NYT spends $ to improve the comment experience, WaPo doesn't.

I have no idea how well this worked.