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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Teh Internets No Comments

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 1:01 PM

In the wake of extreme fighting over the iPad, Engadget has made an announcement: They're turning off their comments for a while.

Hey guys, we know you like to have your fun, voice your opinions, and argue over your favorite gear, but over the past few days the tone in comments has really gotten out of hand. What is normally a charged — but fun — environment for our users and editors has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations... and that's just not acceptable. Some of you out there in the world of anonymous grandstanding have gotten the impression that you run the place, but that's simply not the case.

I'm really curious to see what will happen to Engadget's numbers if this experiment runs for more than a week or so. I've been reading the site for a while now, and I've favored Engadget over Gizmodo precisely because of the comments, which, when they're not informative, are at least hilarious.

Comments (8) RSS

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It's interesting (and possibly a little suspicious) that by putting out an *arguably* much less than perfect product, Apple has spawned a shit-storm of sufficient controversy to make everyone at least take notice.

I get questions about 'this new ipad thing' from friends and family who would NEVER have heard about it save for two things:

1) The controversy.
2) The farcical name.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is trying a new twist on the old iPhone approach. Launch an 'OK' product that won't ship for a few months, generate serious name recognition, then announce improvements near the release date.

There are already hints of additional functionality in the SDK (handwriting recognition, video calls) and, interestingly, the shipping date should roughly coincide with the iPhone OS update schedule.

That said, I couldn't give less of a shit about this latest rectangular piece of plastic.

Posted by Danger on February 2, 2010 at 1:30 PM

So if we can get Fnarf and Will in Seattle to fight enough, would that shut SLOG comments down?

Posted by Banna

on February 2, 2010 at 1:41 PM

People getting into heated arguements about a product that only a select few have even touched seems pointless. I'm not excited or angry. I don't care.

Posted by The Amazing Jim

on February 2, 2010 at 1:54 PM

Slog without comments would be worthless. Engadget doesn't need them.. it's almost all gadget news.

Posted by meks on February 2, 2010 at 1:56 PM

Why don't they just moderate the comments?

Posted by yelahneb

on February 2, 2010 at 2:00 PM

Yelahneb - they've said that they're pulling all the comments until they've had time to go through the posts and ban all of the IPs that are the worst offenders. Not quite the workload as moderating each comment, but still helpful in terms of getting rid of the most ugly and virulent trolls.

Posted by Canadian nurse on February 2, 2010 at 2:48 PM

I remember a few years ago Gizmodo had a problem with abusive commenting so, instead of moderating all their comments, they started dizemvoweling abusive comments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disemvoweli…

I would LOVE to see it happen here.

Love.

Posted by bytowneboy on February 2, 2010 at 3:48 PM