Nick Denton: every human a moderator!
Owen Thomas on Anil Dash's interview of Nick Denton:
Daily Dot | Gawker Media's Nick Denton comments on "the tragedy of the comments": In 2002… Dash met Denton…. Denton hadn’t yet launched his… Gawker Media… Dash would join Six Apart, one of the first blog-software startups…. We can blame them both, in other words, for the mess that has ensued. Comments on blogs and other Web communities are mostly a mess: uncivil, insipid, and unmanageable…. Denton called the state of affairs “the tragedy of the comments”… current approaches like moderation… were inadequate.
So he’s been having Gawker’s technology team roll its own. “The core of the Gawker idea that we're building, that will launch on Gawker.com in about six weeks, is that everyone owns the thread they start,” said Denton. The commenting system, which will later be introduced across Gawker’s network of eight sites, will both allow only invited commenters to comment on particular posts and will allow commenters who start a thread to control who can reply…. "I want the sources, the experts, the authorities to comment on discussions,” said Denton….
“I’ve seen writers cry” after reading comments, he said. The new system, he hoped, might “actually soften that divide between editors and commenters” and allow them to “share responsibility and ownership” for the quality of conversation on Gawker’s sites…. Denton’s clearly focused on that word: “conversation”…
