I LIVED IT: I tried to navigate the @news comments section

@news is a place for conversation. Unlike the stuffed shirts at certain other sites, it allows its userbase to discuss the content posted here. Have a hot take about the latest Anarchy Radio? Concerned about what’s going on in Russia? Just drop into the comments section and speak your mind.

These are all things I was telling myself as I searched in vain through the comments section on a certain post last night, in a desperate search to follow a conversation thread about rewilding.

It’s no secret that the comment system on this site makes tracking responses a little complicated, but given my years on here and vast experience with other forums I figured I’d gotten the hang of it. Besides, all I was offering was some clarification on the definition of permaculture. Add the timestamp, make my point, and get out.

Easy, right? Not so much.

The first blow came when I refreshed the page an hour later to find a few people had responded to my comment. Or were they just talking to each other? Neither had used timestamps, and both were saying I (?) was a fucking liberal and probably a cop.

Not to be discouraged, I responded to the one that actually mentioned permaculture. However, in my haste, I forgot the timestamp and it was here that my doom was sealed. Ten minutes later the post was flooded with comments deriding me, or the person I’d been responding to, or someone else.

It was awful. Kind of. It’s hard to get angry when you don’t know if an insult is being directed at you. I attempted to respond to one of the few on-topic comments only to find myself in a different, unrelated argument with a troll about paleo-nihilism. It was ugly.

Could I have handled this better? Maybe. To be honest, I hadn’t come into the comments of an article about the Yellow Vests protests to argue about permaculture, never mind paleo-nihilism. But what can I say? I like to talk, and a lot of people are wrong about a lot of stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I like an active comments section, but these conversations would go a lot smoother if I knew whether the person being insulted is me or someone else.

Get it together @news!

There are 16 Comments

I have had many tragic experiences trying to find my previous comments to elaborate upon, alas, they had been deleted without my knowing, for no apparent reason. Oddly, the abusive replies to my deleted comment have often been left, which I then reply to, only to have the abusive comment I was replying to deleted, leaving my comment, out of context, just hanging there in a void, as if I am an insane troll posting random comments into a detached conversation. Very disturbing!!

PS I think that may have been me you mistook for a troll concerning paleo-nihilism, since I coined the term. Sorry!

Somebody was talking shit on crimethinc in the comments section about a month back. They were a fucking jackass.

it is not that big a deal to hack drupal to display the comment threading in a more useful way. or, why not switch to use the theme/module that is already being used on the forums pages? oops, i just looked, and it seems that the site admins have recently changed the forums to use the same lame theme being used on the main article/comment pages. that's interesting. the one area of the site where comments were actually organized in a useful way, had been removed for the same annoying commenting style used elsewhere. zero steps forward, one step back. i guess.

It is based off how Aragorn's mind works so don't be fooled that it's a technical issue. I gave up trying to follow (conversations) comments especially when returning to a thread where more comments had been added overnight. Sadly, people will not address and time stamp preferring the government of @news to hopefully do all the work for them... such are the 'anarchists' of today!!! Why not delete comments which are not addressed and time-stamped regardless of their content to promote behaviour change. I can hear those ridiculous Stirnerites having none of it because they're really just spotty rebellious teens...bless 'em.

"It is based off how Aragorn's mind works so don't be fooled that it's a technical issue."

not mutually exclusive though, eh?

to read more of the comments and put our minds to work figuring out who-responded-to-who. I'm not much of a hacker so often i just end up using the search bar and just thinking TLDR.

it was a bit jarring waking up to see my picture on the front page ; )

Hi. I like that the comments thread is intense. I like that people can debate and discuss freely. It is real anarchy without the leftist censorship. But @news deletes comments. Just for saying this, this might get deleted. But they do. There is censorship here. Especially anything that criticizes Collective.

It's not censorship, it's moderation -- neither the state, nor your boss, nor anyone else with more power than you is preventing you from expressing your ideas. You are using a platform maintained by a collective who have standards that are (more or less) clearly articulated about what they want to host. Taking out ad hominems and non-contextual discussion of the site's moderation are two of the things they don't want. Both of these were in fact responses to frequent criticisms the site received back around 2012 as attempts at raising the caliber of discussion.

I think A-News is a super valuable resource for discussion, even though you need to wade through a lot of junk and boring look-at-me trolls. IGD doesn't allow any discussion, which means either posts with contradictory perspectives stand side by side without being brought into communication, or discussion is outsourced to social media, where actual censorship occurs and is a nightmare world of total surveillance. Reddit is heavily censored. Raddle is a far-left indignation engine that is sometime fun but doesn't have the substance of a-news. Regional counter-info sites mostly don't do comments or if they do, they moderate them in advance so there is a delay on them appearing, which makes a dynamic exchange impossible.

If you have critiques of this project, the collective has always been pretty chill (to my knowledge) about receiving them if they're made respectfully and in a space where they're welcome -- as a forum post, by email, or in the seemingly twice-yearly totw's where they solicit feedback (like this one?). The best response remains to just try to have the kinds of conversations you want to see more of.

"If you have critiques of this project, the collective has always been pretty chill (to my knowledge) about receiving them if they're made respectfully and in a space where they're welcome -- as a forum post, by email, or in the seemingly twice-yearly totw's where they solicit feedback (like this one?)."

Yes indeed. And so this *is* my critique. Some call it moderation. I call it censorship. Apples and oranges. This site is the best so far. It's Going Down is garbage. Crimethinc is close behind them. Total anarchy here. I love it. I am excited to see the Attassa comments thread take off like a rocket!

certainly a binary to be explored. My sense is that decent moderation prevents a website from being overloaded with spam and things that aren't specific to the topic being discussed.

Perhaps the trolls will spend hours insisting that they're being serious but regardless of their own opinions on the subject, they aren't. Even if they tried, I doubt they could.

The troll rings of power eventually hollow you out and you become a troll wraith, unable to have good faith discussions like a living human. You just roll up on every topic with your same troll bullshit, all like - SHIIIRRE …. BAAAGGINS ….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxR8pvca2o

Notice how he doesn't feed the troll? Just throws Bilbo under the bus tho. Fukin snitch...

agreed ; )

is a Racist, Colonialist, Xenophobic, Misogynist, Homophobic, Biphobic, Transphobic, Nonbinaryphobic, Kinkophobic, Ageist, Ableist, Imperialist Monster because it does not censor out my comments on IdPol.
It should be BANNED and those responsible for it put in Re-Education Facilities.

Add new comment