I don't 'do' Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, so those contact options are out.
Your editorial email address will be swamped for a while until people get bored with the lack of near-realtime debate.
"...our readers are best served by dedicating our resources to doing more reporting than attempting to police a comments section...".
That's why you appoint trusted moderators. Anyway, your 'resources' are now going to be split between processing email, visiting Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn...
16 people post the same comment 45 seconds after the article goes online (without reading it properly).
8 people post more thoughtful but identical comments 15 minutes later.
I wake up 16 hours after the article goes online and post my tuppence worth into a rely to whatever is at the top. (without bothering to read the other 362 comments).
> > people get bored with the lack of near-realtime debate
> You're making the assumption that people want this.
That might actually be a useful filter. The people out to cause trouble who seem to get off on the reaction to poor comments are more likely to be put off by the lack of immediacy than those who are more interested in a proper debate and take their time writing something well thought out and coherent.
I don't 'do' Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, so those contact options are out.
They are, but only for you. They're still options for the author and everyone who hasn't opted out. That's what opting out means - your choice not to use a communication tool only affects you. The impact of your choice will be that you can't discuss something with the article's author directly.
If the editorial email address is swamped then they'll close it, or make it harder to find. That's all.
The trouble is, opting out of facebook used to mean just that: opting out of facebook. Increasingly, however, it means opting out of engaging with a host of other sites. I think it's pretty poor form of a site to segregate its users by locking out those who don't happen to have an account on a separate third-party site.
Your comment struck a chord with me, that's a succinct explanation of the creepover of these services everywhere.
Made me consider a shared (fake) facebook account - one that would be used just for such interactions, shared among folks that are averse to creating an account themselves. Sharing the username-password combo itself would soon lend itself to trollish password reset attempts though, so perhaps there could be a service that accepts email and makes facebook posts on your behalf using its own account. The email format could be something like:
Type: Wall post [or "comment" or "private message"]
Page Url: <Vice's page>
Content: First!
Facebook (or whatever other service this is created for) would probably catch up with the profile sooner or later, but that just means time to move to a new fake profile. Given the amount of disregard these companies show for user privacy, I have no moral compunction against such "deception".
Perhaps a weekend project for someone with this itch to scratch.
Building on third party services is a brilliant, if not essential, part of the innovation process. The fact that people choose not to use the most third party service among content websites is their choice (and it's an understandable one), but they should learn to live with the consequences of that decision, which will include not being able to use some services they might want to.
Saying "It'd be better if content sites didn't use FB!" is something that would have a detrimental impact on the web experience of more than a billion other people who have chosen not to opt out. That's something that you have to consider when you suggest an alternative solution.
If you can build a good, working service without using anything from a third party then you can build the same service quicker, better, and cheaper using third parties and concentrating on just the innovative part. There is no sensible business reason to build everything yourself.
I don't see where you're showing that it is "essential" to the part that is being innovated to use these third-party services. It's the essential part I'm having a problem with.
I'm suggesting it's essential to use third party services to do the things that aren't innovative, so you have the time, runway, and focus to do the innovative things.
For example, no SaaS startup should be writing their own payment system unless they're a fintech startup doing payments. If you're wasting time building things that you buy in for much lower cost then you will fail.
I'm not saying not to use third parties, I'm disagreeing with using the term essential in that context. It is too encompassing and final of a statement. To me it implies that any innovation in the space cannot possibly happen without the usage of third-party services, which is simply not true.
I believe s73v3r is saying that using third party services allows you to dedicate more time to innovation, rather than spending your time coding services that already exist and are probably better than you can write yourself anyway.
It absolutely can. But now you're dividing your time between what you're trying to innovate in, and doing boilerplate stuff that has already been solved and set up for you. There are only so many hours in the day.
I have not disagreed with that. Is it wrong of me to think that the word "essential" is far too limiting for the context of the statement? You seem to agree with the point I'm trying to make here.
Honestly, I think that this introduces a new barrier that trolls and abrasive people won't go through the bother of doing -- but people genuinely interested won't really find this much of an issue.
It also might serve as a place where people can think more about their responses knowing they will be given more credence and visibility instead of trying to respond with canned thoughts and knee-jerk reactions without really giving the conversation and their position much thought.
...Or, it can just turn out dead. Honestly, in this new age of more information and data than we can deal with, I personally have come to realize the value of curators, and although this might be a slippery slope in terms of hive-mind in that regard [one person deciding what's worth viewing for everyone] I think done well it can be pretty amazing.
Your editorial email address will be swamped for a while until people get bored with the lack of near-realtime debate.
"...our readers are best served by dedicating our resources to doing more reporting than attempting to police a comments section...".
That's why you appoint trusted moderators. Anyway, your 'resources' are now going to be split between processing email, visiting Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn...
We'll see.