Comment sections are poison: handle with care or remove them

[Lex Talionis]

Comment sections are poison: handle with care or remove them

Tauriq Moosa

Friday 12 September 2014 07.40 EDT theguardian.com

Comments are often regarded as a right but they can do more harm than good. In the absence of strict moderation, we’d be much better off without them

Prolonged exposure to comment sections can cause hair loss, sustained vomiting, muscle wasting and radiation burns. Photograph: Foto Factory/Alamy

It sits there like an ugly growth beneath articles, bloated and throbbing with vitriol. It groans as hatred expands its force, waiting for any point of dissent to break it – to unleash its full fury on targets who dare convey some measure of civility or dissent (if you want almost guaranteed hate, be a woman). Comment sections, to me, are the chronic pain centres of the internet, the part of the digital body we’re all forced to accept exists, but must manage by injecting policies and systems into.

Some find great value in comment sections and one feels almost obliged to say “Not all comment sections”. They are, like the internet itself, tools: we don’t discard wrenches because of a few accidents. Yet, if people start using wrenches to mostly beat each other with, maybe it’s time to radically rethink whether they should be allowed at all.

...inevitably, the comment section ended up a fat sack of misogyny hanging like an unwanted testicle below it.

More: http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/sep/12/comment-sections-toxic-moderation