<story><title>Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/09/06/mozilla-washington-post-reinventing-online-comments/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>richforrester</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s funny. I tend to skip the article and go into the comments.&lt;p&gt;Comments tell me &amp;quot;what&amp;#x27;s wrong with the article&amp;quot;, and in doing so, give you a good picture of what the article is about.&lt;p&gt;As for the &amp;quot;what&amp;#x27;s wrong&amp;quot; part itself: generally speaking, you can really tell by how the comment is written whether it&amp;#x27;s legit or not. That way, you kinda get two sides of the coin, and you can decide for yourself what&amp;#x27;s going on.</text></item><item><author>dionidium</author><text>I read the paper version of the Times most week days. There are no comments (well, I guess there are a &lt;i&gt;few&lt;/i&gt; letters to the editor).&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t miss them. I&amp;#x27;m sure commentcowboy236523 from Atlanta has some important things to say, but &lt;i&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t need to read them&lt;/i&gt;. If I want conversation, I&amp;#x27;ll come to a place like Hacker News or reddit, where conversation is the goal. I can find that when I want it.&lt;p&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t need it when I&amp;#x27;m trying to relax and enjoy the paper. Comments simply &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t add any value to the experience&lt;/i&gt;. We don&amp;#x27;t need &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; comments. We don&amp;#x27;t need them at all.</text></item><item><author>creaghpatr</author><text>Can&amp;#x27;t speak for WaPo but the New York Times comments sections are absolutely dominated by a handful of designated &amp;#x27;top commenters&amp;#x27; who rush to post on any major story.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes their comments are good, but then there&amp;#x27;s the guy who writes a poem every single time, or &amp;#x27;Socrates&amp;#x27; who posts the same cookie-cutter &amp;#x27;blame-the-GOP-all-the-way-back-to-bush&amp;#x27; comment with the most dramatic rhetoric possible, trolling for likes of course.&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I&amp;#x27;m pretty satisfied with the Times comment system, everyone does get a voice even though the top comments are absolutely fixed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>StavrosK</author><text>I think you two are thinking of different things, and missing an important point: Comments are only as good as the community that&amp;#x27;s writing them. YouTube comments are the kind of comments you don&amp;#x27;t want to read, HN comments are the kind you skip the article for.&lt;p&gt;Whether comments are valuable very much depends on the kind of people you have writing them, and I believe it&amp;#x27;s worth trying to maintain a good commenting community.</text></comment>
<story><title>Washington Post integrates Talk – Mozilla’s open-source commenting platform</title><url>https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/09/06/mozilla-washington-post-reinventing-online-comments/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>richforrester</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s funny. I tend to skip the article and go into the comments.&lt;p&gt;Comments tell me &amp;quot;what&amp;#x27;s wrong with the article&amp;quot;, and in doing so, give you a good picture of what the article is about.&lt;p&gt;As for the &amp;quot;what&amp;#x27;s wrong&amp;quot; part itself: generally speaking, you can really tell by how the comment is written whether it&amp;#x27;s legit or not. That way, you kinda get two sides of the coin, and you can decide for yourself what&amp;#x27;s going on.</text></item><item><author>dionidium</author><text>I read the paper version of the Times most week days. There are no comments (well, I guess there are a &lt;i&gt;few&lt;/i&gt; letters to the editor).&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t miss them. I&amp;#x27;m sure commentcowboy236523 from Atlanta has some important things to say, but &lt;i&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t need to read them&lt;/i&gt;. If I want conversation, I&amp;#x27;ll come to a place like Hacker News or reddit, where conversation is the goal. I can find that when I want it.&lt;p&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t need it when I&amp;#x27;m trying to relax and enjoy the paper. Comments simply &lt;i&gt;don&amp;#x27;t add any value to the experience&lt;/i&gt;. We don&amp;#x27;t need &lt;i&gt;better&lt;/i&gt; comments. We don&amp;#x27;t need them at all.</text></item><item><author>creaghpatr</author><text>Can&amp;#x27;t speak for WaPo but the New York Times comments sections are absolutely dominated by a handful of designated &amp;#x27;top commenters&amp;#x27; who rush to post on any major story.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes their comments are good, but then there&amp;#x27;s the guy who writes a poem every single time, or &amp;#x27;Socrates&amp;#x27; who posts the same cookie-cutter &amp;#x27;blame-the-GOP-all-the-way-back-to-bush&amp;#x27; comment with the most dramatic rhetoric possible, trolling for likes of course.&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I&amp;#x27;m pretty satisfied with the Times comment system, everyone does get a voice even though the top comments are absolutely fixed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>KGIII</author><text>Similar, I skim the article and read the comments. In some cases, I just read the comments. Though, I don&amp;#x27;t do this on any direct media sites, like online newspapers.&lt;p&gt;At Slashdot, chances are that I haven&amp;#x27;t read the article. I go straight to the comments and read those.&lt;p&gt;Curiously, I can&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s one of the reasons I visit.</text></comment>