[hello_there]

Here's a slightly off-topic dream about online comments:

In an ideal comment system I believe that articles, comments and moderation events should come from three different, decentralized streams (like Atom) that the end user can subscribe to individually and that are joined at the end users client. That would would provide transparency to the moderation process, ability to comment anywhere, and it would allow moderators to become effective spam-filters without giving them the power of censorship. Now, imagine if this system was built into the browser and it became the default commenting platform for all websites...

[ZenoArrow]

I like where you're going with this, but here's a question for you... Who controls the streams that are available on a website? Is it the end user or the website owner?

[hello_there]

I haven't thought out the details, but I really think that it should not be the website owner, or any other individual or organization, but rather some sort of decentralized community effort. For example, one could imagine a distributed log that every commenter and moderator appends to and that is replicated to different parts of the world -- each of which a client could subscribe to.

[unescape]

The end user should always be in control.

[ZenoArrow]

You say that, but have you considered the downsides?

Imagine you know someone in the public eye, let's say a musician, with their own website. They enable comments, and site now has comments all over it that they have no editorial control over whatsoever. People are posting a high amount of offensive content. What do you advise that this musician does?

[unescape]

The musician can display whatever they want on their website; they don't have to host content they don't like. In the "dream" commenting system, the comments are independent; you can apply your own filters and fetch comments from sources the site owner may not approve of.

[s73ver_]

But they're still associated with that site, and that musician.

[unescape]

Only in the sense that someone who makes a Wix site that says "Neil Young Sux" is associated with Neil Young.

[hello_there]

> Imagine you know someone in the public eye, let's say a musician, with their own website. They enable comments

In my mind it would be the users, not the site owners that would enable the comments.

> People are posting a high amount of offensive content. What do you advise that this musician does?

My advice in this case would be to create a moderator stream that the end users can subscribe to. Perhaps some mechanisms could be put into the system to make it easy for site owners to suggest a "default" moderation stream that the end-users can opt-in to.

In this case the site owners would be able to moderate comments through voluntary cooperation with its users, but it wouldn't be able to censor opinions that it didn't agree with, because the end users would always be in control of how its stream is filtered and would always be able to verify that on-topic posts aren't censored.

[s73ver_]

Isn't this now Mastodon? If it's not actually connected to the site in question?

"My advice in this case would be to create a moderator stream that the end users can subscribe to."

That sounds like a pretty complex thing to do, which doesn't solve the problem of, "The comments on my site are overrun with people posting racial slurs."

"In this case the site owners would be able to moderate comments through voluntary cooperation with its users, but it wouldn't be able to censor opinions that it didn't agree with, because the end users would always be in control of how its stream is filtered and would always be able to verify that on-topic posts aren't censored."

I don't believe that's actually a problem, though. You can always go make your own site if you want your voice heard.

[unescape]

doesn't solve the problem of, "The comments on my site are overrun with people posting racial slurs."

I think you're misunderstanding the proposal. Comments and moderation are independent of the site, not on the site.

If distributed commenting and moderation is too complex to implement, then we need to move to network designs that make it simpler.

[aethertron]

Agreed, this is the correct framework for web comments.

I'd perhaps do most of my commenting in a private comment stream with 2 or 3 friends.

[s73ver_]

Why would I, as a site owner, want to cede control of the comments that are associated with my site? If, for example, a comment was just a string of racial slurs, there's no way in hell I would want that associated with my site, and I would want that deleted as soon as possible, regardless if you would want to see it.

[Iv]

What hello_there proposes is a comment system that is not associated with your website. It would akin to having an article of your website linked to a subreddit and people commenting on it.