I’m reopening my comment section, albeit in a very moderated form.
Part of the beauty of blogging is that it provides a venue for two-way communication. Without comments, a blog really ceases to be a blog.
Anyway, I’ve had a couple of days to think about it, and my initial decision to close the comment section completely was, perhaps, a bit rash. So I’ll give it another go, and if things proceed smoothly, they’ll stay open.
{ 88 comments… read them below or add one }
Wonder-Troll powers activate!
j/k
Nice to see it re-opened. Hopefully the maturity level will improve.
땡큐 형님!! 유 알 소 원더풀!!!!
I saw a brief hint of some form of meta-moderation an hour or two ago.
Yes Yes, very Won Do Pul.
Block any IPs originating from China or Japan will help to improve stopping most trolls.
It only takes a few bad apples…
i regret your decision already. i was excited to actually visit the blog again rather than just read it via my feed reader.
Thanks for letting us back in. Now I can go back to my favorite pastime of arguing about which obscure map made by what sloppy cartographer indicates which completely worthless collection of seagull deposits.
I missed everything! I even had a rib removed!
Thanks Robert, you’ve given me back that part of my social life not spent pondering the vauguries of test cricket at the pub.
good.
i knew i should have waited a few days before starting my own blog because my suspicion was you closed your comment section out of anger because that guy had the nerve to call you at work. you’re blog is an institution. i’m glad you’re back, rob.
I think Nathan Rabin’s tagline sums things up well; that “we remain, as always, cautiously optimistic.”
Pawi, you have a new . . . uh ‘Avatar’. Has anyone else — by the way — seen that movie? I’m nearly motivated enough to joint the Na’vi clan, except that my copy of Pynchon’s Inherent Vice has just today arrived, and nobody on Pandora would be able to discuss it with me. Would anyone on the Marmot’s Hole other than Sperwer be competent (except for maybe Bevers)? The novel is so freakin’ funny, but my wife just stares at me when I try to explain. Guess yuh had to be there . . .
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Uh . . . “joint the Na’vi clan”? Believe me — that was not pun, just a Freudian slip. They’re the latest in the fashion world. (Along with the Venetian Blind.)
Jeffery Hodges
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Mr. Hodges,
I’m waiting until next year for the paperback. Is it funnier than “Vineland”? Cause I thought that was hilarious. Didn’t laugh as much at “GR,” though.
i thought they were called ‘gravatars’. my blog has much better resolutions of the gravatars i make. have a visit one day.
Robert, if you close down your comment section for good, I’m afraid that this site will simply wither and die. I wish there was a way to ensure that the comments stay clean and civil from now on. Maybe a stricter registration/posting system would help?
Not sure whether the software allows it or not, but what if only the people authorized by you can leave comments? If they stray and don’t see the error of their ways after a being warned, they could lose their posting privileges.
Good decision, Robert.
Yes. I promise to be better from now-on — no more of my nasty flame-wars and pointless trolling…
Good to see it up……
Sanshinseon is going to behave himself!? This I gotta see.
I don’t think so. Whoever called your boss to complain about your blog was completely out of bounds.
Sad truth is, you DO need a sherriff — Andy briefly doing that last year helped the situation a lot.
Shucks,
Shim shim ha da as ever!
hi ! I’m an italian guy who travels to Korea for business, i’ve been following this blog for a while and love it….this is my first post, i chose this handle cos i’m basically a criminal (ha ha ha), i’m happy the comment section re-opened…i promise to behave, still can’t believe how such a nice, clean-cut, white collar place like Korea can inspire so much angst though
Have a nice life, tbonetylr.
Commenter banned.
No, it was rash, Dogbertt, but I do not think Robert learned anything from it.
#25 banned? Com’on, Robert….
I ban myself.
Were you born oblivious to irony, Gerry?
I volunteer to be one of the moderators
I prefer the blog with comments, but I seriously doubt it would suffer without them. Moderation would help for sure.
Rob,
I think having a “Like or Dislike” section in the bottom is very Confucian in a way… using public shame to influence behavior. K’ung fu-tzu would be proud!
I actually found myself this morning clicking on all the hidden comments (including my own) to see why they were hidden.
So far, it seems pretty arbitrary and not at all related to offensiveness. In con law, it’s called the heckler’s veto, but if these are the new rules, I’ll play by ‘em.
DLB
First rule of Fight Cl… uh TMH is we don’t talk about how much of a good time we are having in Korea…
Why 조엘’s comment would get 3 dislikes is beyond me. Kudos to Robert for trying to bring some civility to the comment threads.
So far, I’m laughing more than with Vineland, less than with Gravity’s Rainbow.
Jeffery Hodges
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You’re right. “Gravatars” they be. My mistake — I’m not well up on the terminology.
Jeffery Hodges
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It’s pretty clear that some people are voting for/against the commenter, rather than on the content of the comments.
Yes, and this could get interesting.
Jeffery Hodges
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We can probably alleviate that by making the Like or Dislikes public. I know I’m gonna get like 10 dislikes for saying that…
Umm….noooo.
This “thumbs up/thumb down” thing is actually very Roman emperor like.
Well, yeah, that’s what it appears to be evolving into…
Well, it is only the beginning of an interesting experiment in crowd-sourced moderation. We’ll see how it goes.
that’s becoming very obvious.
sanshinseon,
We’ll be keeping our eye on you…
That really doesn’t address the issue at all.
The issue is that whether a particular post is “liked” or disliked” is the correct basis on which to censor or not to censor a post.
In my opinion, the censorship criterion should be whether a particular post has objectionable content, e.g. whether it contains such things as ad hominen attacks, incontrovertibly “trolling” drivel, etc.
nice gravatar, mr.
cmm, you still there?
Gangster High…my favourite movie, a true hidden gem of Korean cinema (i’m dead serious once in a lifetime)
WK is absolutely right about this. What MH needs is more transparency, not less. As things stand now, posters now have two opportunities to demonstrate their cowardice — first by hiding behind anonymous posts, and now by making anonymous votes against comments (or commentators) they don’t like.
My money is that this new feature won’t last long, or that if it does, hidden comments will actually attract readers curious about what the hidden comment contained. It’s simple human psychology — tell someone they can’t see something, and they will instinctively demand their right to see it.
So please, please, PLEASE vote thumbs down on this post.
DLB
Unfortunately, you appear to be right.
Will let it go to see what happens, but it looks like I need to find another system.
Unless you tell me otherwise Robert, I will delete off-topic and obviously offensive content from any thread I put up.
A crew of moderators may be in order. I think once such got going, it would discourage others.
Following my simple human psychology, I voted “Like”.
But actually, I kinda like this system. Once people catch on about how this operates, I think it could work.
and this will really be unfair to korean posters since more eng-teachers come here than do koreans.
Slashdot employees a meta-moderation system that is highly effective. Every once in a while you are allocated mod-points and you go into threads and rank the comments. After rating in a thread you aren’t allowed to comment in it. Once a thread has stabilized every post is tagged with a rating, e.g. “+5″, and a tag, e.g. “informative.” When you browse a thread you can set your tolerances. So you can browse at “-1″ (troll) and see every post in a thread, or you can browse at “+5″ and see only those comments which have been deemed to be most helpful.
This system is extremely effective, and provides a very good way for you to tailor your comment experience to the amount of time you wish to invest in that particular subject. Unfortunately here there could be issues related to personal vendettas, as TMH is a much more closely knit forum. However, looking at this thread I don’t see anything worthwhile that was modded out of visibility. I think once people have time to adjust to the system it could be an effective way of communal self-moderation.
For me personally, when I post on meta-moderated sites I always make sure that I am contributing the best content possible. I think it’s human nature to seek praise from the community, even if it is a little thumb up/down.
1. How do you know whether more English teachers (and I assume you mean non-Korean ones) visit this site than do Koreans? I very much doubt that you do.
2. Why do you assume that English teachers will reflectively give bad ratings to your posts and Koreans won’t? From what I’ve read on some threads, there are some English teachers who like you and some Koreans who don’t.
3. In my view so far, people are voting based on their opinion of the contents of the comments, not their authors. It appears to be only you and Barch who are searching for an ego boost and therefore complaining the loudest.
i think it’s obvious that people are simply voting against me because it’s me and not because of what i write. the system is skewed towards the eng-teachers.
KrZ,
You generally have interesting and additive things to say, but man…. your link is worse than rotten.com!
You don’t really have anything to do with that site other than being a fan, right?
You are part of a community here. If you post things which are frequently offensive to a majority of the posters, you can expect to be voted down. It’s the same as if I were to go on a meta-moderated blog frequented by African Americans and start spouting-off about how blacks are responsible for the majority of the crime in the United States. You just have to increase the quality and insight of your posts if you hope to win the approval of the community.
i find being buried under a massive amount of thumb down if anything slightly entertaining and flattering…as they say lots of enemies lots of honour
pawi,
How about a test! How about you type, “puppies and kittens are adorable beyond belief and I want world peace” and see how many likes and dislikes you get, okay?..
Thanks, KrZ, you explained it much better than I could have.
i’d say a post like that over the internet would be a sure sign of a serial killer personality
BULL! it’s just a popularity contest. i’m sure marmot can see that.
Turned off nested comments — too hard to follow if they aren’t automatically placed at the bottom.
@ pawi # 63
it’s just the internet, it should be about having fun not getting even more stressed
Hi There,
First time writing although have visited this site many times. I am glad that comments are once again possible, and that they will be moderated. However, people must be careful to like/dislike the comment on its merits rather than on the writer. Pawi is right in a way that this system has the potential to develop into a popularity contest. I hope that people will use the like/dislike function as a method to prevent trolling/playing devil’s advocate, rather than just supporting view they themselves hold.
If nothing else, it’s been interesting indeed to see the reactions ratings have brought out in certain commenters, while not others.
And pawi, many non-Korean commenters are garnering low ratings, in case you haven’t noticed.
Indeed, the lowest-rated commenter so far has been tbonetylr, who is an English teacher.
the lowest rated commenter has been tbontylr…
Brendon, I would suspect that’s because you haven’t yet started making your trademark idiotic ramblings under this new system.
this new thingy is supposed to be about offensive comments and not about how one poster feels about another poster. almost all my comments on this thread have been voted down and yet, there isn’t anything offensive about any of them.
as for being concerned, you misunderstand if you think it’s about the eng-teacher. my concern is simply with robert not banning me for simply being unpopular with a group for which i have low opinions.
Pawi, while you might have made an inoffensive comment here and there, I think the reason you get “voted down” is because readers think of you as an offensive poster.
It’s clear to most that you say things just to piss people off, and it works!
This voting system is just a good measure of how well you’re doing.
i’ll repeat: ain’t nothing i wrote in this thread was offensive. This new vote thingy is just about popularity. nothing more.
offensive? you want offensive? i save that for my own blog, thank you.
I won’t say what these ratings actually reflect, whether it be popularity, offensiveness, or the pleasure of staring into Brendon Carr’s dreamy eyes. But I will say they do not seem to reflect anything useful, at least not to me (although no one is calling my boss to complain about this blog, so I guess my interests are different from Mr. Marmot’s). I agree with pawi: nothing he’s said on this thread has been offensive. If people are voting him down because of offensive things he has said on other threads, that doesn’t seem fair. However, if he’s being voted down because people think he’s wrong about the rating system, that’s another story. Possibly unfair.
Overall: do not like this system.
An addendum to what I wrote on #46 to make things clear, as I feel very strongly about this issue:
I recognize that many people are voting on the basis of the substantive intellectual content of the comments, and not reflexively on the basis of their visceral opinion of the commenters themselves. For instance, I have voted “like” for comments from commenters I intensely dislike, and vice versa.
But even if people vote “honestly,” I still see no compelling rationale for why this particular system was incorporated if the goal is to censor offensive comments. To wit: A cogently argued and true comment without any inherently offensive content may still become extremely unpopular and become censored. In short, this system is a pure popularity contest with close to zero value in terms of weeding out offensive comments.
OK, I’ve changed the rating system to something a) a bit more nuanced, and b) something that doesn’t screw up my administration page.
It also allows for the rating of posts, too.
The new comment ranking system seems quite cool but I’m wondering why a comment as innocuous as “Good decision” would get four thumbs down vs 2 up? Is it because of who it was written by?
IMO, however, Marmot’s Hole never really needed a comments section. I rarely look at them, and if I do, I usually regret it :0)
Again Pawi, I’d agree you haven’t said anything offensive yet in this thread.
But you have a bad reputation. So people see your name and click thumbs down.
i’ll say it again: nothing i’ve written here is offensive. as for having a bad rep, well, people always gotta have a good villain. this shouldn’t be about popularity; it should be about content. i’m done with this thread.
Not offensive yet, but you are huffing and puffing the old “Eng-Teacher” line (which you assume every white person or anyone posting anything you perceive negative about Korea to be) as a warm up to another of your famed shit-flinging escapades.
If you could please refer me to any insightful, informative, or otherwise important comment that you have ever made on this blog I would be more than welcome to reevaluate my current dismally low opinion of you.
There you go again, assuming we are all “eng-teachers”.
So what you’re saying is you are allowed to have low opinions of them, but they are not allowed to have low opinions of you.
Yes pawi, I’m here. Just stopped by to see what had become of the MH, and was glad to see comments opened. It will be interesting to see how this works out. Happy Holidays, everyone.
Went to your blog Pawi and looked around – nice start. Hope to read more.
Good call.
Hey Robert and everyone,
glad to see the comment section open again, the blog’s not the same without it.
as for rating systems & moderation, I feel TWO rating systems at the same time is overkill. I have no idea what to use which for.
Robert, I understand you can’t be following each and every comment thread and spend time moderating, however, there must be a few people on this blog who have your trust, maybe setting up a small team of moderators could be a good thing.
instead of the whole “ratings” system, what about using a single button “report as offensive”, that could only be pressed by “registered” people ? this way you might be able to track down who pressed what, and for which reason… might need to do a bit of education at first to limit the “serial-clickers”, but at least it could direct you quickly to controversial comments, I think that could work.
closing comments on one single thread could cut short to any degenerating conversation, and I think could be frustrating enough to commenters to show them they crossed a line.
anyway, I like the collaborative aspect of this blog, it’s the only one I’ve been keeping reading in the past 6 years, and I’ve long left Korea. glad comments are back, hope some people could smarten up a bit…
keep up the good work !
The system br outlines is exactly what I had in mind.
br, I agree , Robert knows my email address. I wish for the day he allows me to volunteer as I stated at GI Korea’s drop. But as also stated, Sonagi deserves it first IMHO.
heh…. i remember back in the day when you first started blogging, the comment section was FAR worse war zone than it is today. I stopped reading your blog after reading the comments section even though mostly, your blog is fun to read.
When you turned off your comment section, I wanted to congratulate you in your decision, but of course, I couldn’t leave a comment!
Only reason why I read comments now is to see if there are any postings by Dr. Lankov or Robert Neff….
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