Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos
Good move by the Free Press and other Sun papers. Sometimes there would be one or two good, well thought out comments on an article, but most of the comments fit one of the following categories:
- Blaming unions for everything
- Blaming Kathleen Wynne
- Blaming Stephen Harper
- Dismissing a comment for being from a "liberal" or a "CON" (never a "conservative") no matter how intelligent or well thought out the comment is
- Blaming immigrants/refugees/TFWs for everything
- Blaming organized religion for everything (particularly Christians and Muslims)
- General paranoia and conspiracy theories (particularly relating to 9/11)
- Spam ("That's a great comment but let me tell you about how I make $9000 every day sitting on my ass surfing the Internet while raising 7 children")
- Blaming all students at Western or Fanshawe
- General infighting between regulars, completely off topic from the article at hand
Additionally, *any* article that mentioned a Catholic school was always filled with a ton of comments about the need to defund Catholic schools, no matter how off topic it was.
News stories will still get posted to Facebook and Twitter, and people can still comment there. It's much harder to hide behind a cloak of anonymity on Facebook.
As an advertising manager I have an issue with my clients' ads appearing alongside the garbage comments. Why? People get tired of the comments and start avoiding the website, so the ads are less likely to get exposed.
I think that CBC got online commenting right very early on when they started allowing comments 7-8 years ago. They moderated every single comment, and anything off-topic, spammy, or inflammatory wasn't posted, or was often deleted if reported. They do a lot less moderation nowadays but the quality of the discussion there is definitely much better than what passed on the London Free Press, Toronto Sun, National Post, and other sites (all of whom use Disqus).
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The same negative shit surfaces on Facebook, too, with lots of ignorant, wilfully blind and wilfully under-informed people spewing their hatred and vitriol over everything.
A relative of mine, who happens to be one of those right-wing Negative Nellies, had the nerve to censure me for a political comment I posted to Facebook, arguing that social media should be for social material only and not a venue for political discussion. Well, politics *is* a social behaviour, so political comment is fair game. I think the reason why he reacted the way he did was that my comment must have hit a pro-Conservative nerve and he didn't like it.
People like him are the first to complain about comments they don't like, but hypocritically proclaim that their comments should not be censured or challenged.
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