Article comments seem borked for me

[AlfredoTurkey]

TalonMan said:

AlfredoTurkey said:

The problem is that comments can be down voted for no reason at all. If you hate someone and are as immature as a five year old child with a vendetta, you can down vote for no other reason except said vendetta. This makes it impossible to say anything except positive, ass kissing remarks for whatever the article is talking about. Either you do that, or... bye bye... down voted into elementary school purgatory.

Voting should be allowed but should not have any affect on the comment. It should not raise, lower or god forbid, make it disappear entirely. And for the love of all that is logical, take away the ability for people to self-vote.

So - technical issues aside (which I know is the point of this thread, but for which I'm unable to look at or comment on at the moment), this is more of a philosophical issue which I can talk about...

 

...and I see your viewpoint and agree.

 

BUT...

 

...I can also see the voting/hiding being an affective tool for dealing with intentionally juvenile comments with the sole purpose of instigating and annoying. Sure, moderators should (and do) deal with these types of issues all the time, but the voting is just another tool which allows the community to self-moderate.

 

I don't know - really tough choice as I see benefits on both sides of the argument. :(

The problem with self-moderation is... SELF-moderation. By that, I mean being able to look at yourself in the mirror before pushing down-vote and thinking about why you're doing it. Most people are not using it to moderate for the greater good. It's being used for a much less scrupulous reason and it makes the comments section fan service... or even something worse.

I'd much rather see moderators apply the same rules that apply in the main forums and take care of the problems that way. At least we'd have proper discourse.