Kenty

Kotaku internet fascism

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Okay i integrated Kotaku into my daily surfing schedule about 6 to 8 weeks ago, and have generally used it as a "all the sites i check daily have no new content oh look kotaku has 20 updates" so i've been reading their posts, and occasionally forwarding the odd interesing link to friend/colleagues (as i do for thumbs, joystiq, shack news or wherever) and just generally LURKING, which is what i usually do with all the sites i frequent, i am not a prolific poster just look at my post count on thumbs it's weak even though i've been registered since launch.....

So *anyway*, all of a sudden today i read an article that inspired me enough to bother to click on the comments thread in kotaku (like i always do when i'm bored enough to lurk through comments posted by the unwashed internet minions) and actually CONTRIBUTE towards the discussion. So in doing this i am fully expecting to have the freedom to type my uninteresting random comment but lo and behold instead i get greeted by their 'those who art worthy to post upon these hallowed grounds' FAQ!!!

and here is the url:

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/announcements/kotaku-comments-faq-130964.php

am i missing something? i've been reading the comments threads on kotaku posts for several months and assuming the content was written by your random internet trolls, no different from anywhere else and all of a sudden according to that page i've actually been reading 'words of wisdom FROM "ur favorite gearheads, bloggers, and frequent tipsters to comment".

i'm having trouble understanding this, bear in mind that thumbs forum has no such restrictions yet the general banter is of a decent intellectual and literary standard... so who teh fock moderates their 'i'll invite you to have the privilege to comment upon our hallowed news posts'???"

I hope i just haven't missed something blatantly obvious, if so please correct me.. but otherwise, what's the story here?

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Nope, that's how the whole network Kotaku's on has operated since pretty much forever. They did two posts last month along the lines of "email this address for a comment invite" as they were under a lot of demand for access to the "Post the best comment" contest, but yeah, you generally need an invite from a regular commenter.

And no I don't have one. :deranged:

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I hope i just haven't missed something blatantly obvious, if so please correct me.. but otherwise, what's the story here?

Net snobbery/elitism in a prominent site which should know much better. I discovered this in precisely the same way as you--it pissed me off so I emailed them to ask why they'd done this, and I included a taster about something I know for a fact will be in Sony's HUB service (and it's still unreported at this time) to "sweeten" my enquiry. And... nothing. So I dumped their RSS feed and went elsewhere.

To be honest, I was bored rigid with the cross population of the same dozen-or-so stories on Kotaku and similar blogs anyway, so my daily news intake now has a much better "signal to noise" ratio since I cut them out of it. I honestly don't think I miss anything crucial in not subscribing to them anymore either, but YMMV.

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I only read Eurogamer, the Shack and Gamasutra nowadays. I visit the Thumb because of habit since the clever editorialized news are practically nowhere to be found. ;(

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I mainly visit the blogs like Kotaku and whatnot as they tend to have more offbeat type stuff. Posts about obscure merchandise is something I quite like seeing on sites such as Kotaku and Joystiq, and the input of often sardonic opinion with posts makes a nice change from the hordes of game sites that simply repeat each other's facts.

That said, Kotaku are complete cocks half of the time and their posts irritate me to no end.

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I enjoy the majority of stuff posted on SlashDot Games, which tends to focus on gaming culture and trends--stuff I find really fascinating. The (games-related) subject matter is also quite diverse, which is an added bonus. :tup:

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I think the entire Gawker network switched to invite only comments a while ago, and it's been working its way downto each network site since. I remember when Consumerist launched that it was like that from the start. Of course I had an invite from the get go -- cause I'm cool like that :hah: -- but I never used it.

It is done like this in part to foster a sense of importance (remember GMail invites back in the day?) but, really, the main reason for this is to combat spam. Period. The Gawker sites are very high profile weblogs and have a high relevance on the web, so if any shady motherfucker can get his links on it, they will. It does rather kill a certain level of instant feedback that one might like, but anyone that has had to fight spam in weblog comments (or forums) surely knows: you have to sometimes make the trade-off since being too open leaves you way too vulnerable.

So, in the end, Kotaku (and Gawker) might be assholes, but the even bigger assholes are the spammers (also trolls, but mostly spammers) :pan:

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I occasionally read Kotaku and Joystiq, but neither of them are actually all that good at anything beyond pointing out random shit they find. I wouldn't mind that, except for the fact that everyone who writes for those sites seems to be under the impression that they are in fact actual journalists. Their absolute lack of fact checking, getting quotes, sourcing stories, or even just Googling for something before shitting out an editorial brick pretty much proves they have no idea what they're doing. Blogs are fine, and bloggers can do a good job of reporting news, but bloggers aren't inherently journalists. I don't really think Kotaku or Joystiq are good journalists or good bloggers (they're better at the latter than the former), but they seem to think they excel at the whole shebang. It's really tiring.

It's so painful to see some patently inaccurate story on their site, to write them a correction or added fact that would make it correct, only to be ignored, with a piece of wholly untrue "news" sitting festering on their front page with people commenting on it as if it's fact. God.

As far as gaming blogs go, I do like 4 Color Rebellion a bit. Unlike most other semi-large-size gaming blogs, they are more focused on fun and pointing out interesting things, not on claiming to be some sort of voice of fact and real information, when they're really just some schmoe with a login to Gawker's CMS.

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Everyone who writes for [Kotaku and Joystiq] seems to be under the impression that they are in fact actual journalists. Their absolute lack of fact checking, getting quotes, sourcing stories, or even just Googling for something before shitting out an editorial brick pretty much proves they have no idea what they're doing.

Spot on mate. :tup:

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If they don't behave like journalists, then don't treat them as such.

I usually visit a fair number of various blogs on my daily adventures and many of them seem reluctant to do proper fact checking or whatever (BoingBoing gets around that by issuing lots and lots of corrections when people mail in complaints, "Web 2.0" style) and to be honest, I prefer it like that.

I like getting X amount of information of which Y is bunk/garbage/wrong and then sorting out the accuracy myself rather than getting ((X - Y) - Z) information where Y is bunk and Z is false-positive good stuff the guy was afraid to post. That's obviously a problem if you're not super-clever and handsome like I am, but f:cens0r:k 'em if they can't take a joke.

As for invite-only comments, I probably approve. I don't read the comments on popular blogs or news sites because they tend to run in the hundreds and are filled with garbage (digg.com) . The issue I think, is that Kotaku is not elitist enough and has crap in the comments anyway. When it's done properly, it's pretty good; like the "Okay, screw that guy. What does everyone else think?" thing on Thumbs features (when it has real people and not just Thumbs staff).

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Since I can't really say I disagree with anything, I'll just go ahead and post what blog-type sites I visit too! Of course, everyone goes to the Thumb (not saying that the Thumb is a blog, just that the news sort of functions like that), but besides that there's also GameSetWatch which has some very interesting links and columns from time to time. Then we have 4 Color Rebellion which, aside from having the coolest name, does exactly the same thing for me as it apparently does for Jake.

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Gaming blogs are a very curious species to me, because blogs in the main have a very curious, modernist anti-historical attitude where what they are doing is entirely unique and amazing and new and, well, 2.0. "Fuck the MSM" and all that.

But when it comes to gaming, the things they are doing have been done since the invention of the internet - Gamespy's Planet sites are/were nothing if not a blog network, 4+ years before anyone even thought to invent the word blog. So the gaming blogs are 1.5 at best, but really more like 1.1, which makes it very difficult for me to swallow their cocky "We're so goddamn new and revolutionary" attitude. (To their credit, though, at least Joystiq and Kotaku are aware of the wider game-website ecosystem. I've been to some gaming blogs attached to some blog networks where they seem entirely unaware that there were such things as games websites before their precious blog networks showed up.)

The tricksy commenting systems that these guys have invented is all part of this 2.0-ness. If they act all elitist, then they can quietly ignore the words in the actual comments and pretend that they aren't every bit as bad as the message boards that are so 1.0. Of course it helps with spam, but given the number of different approaches there are to spam prevention/maintenance, the decision to go with this one seems strongly founded in this cult of self-importance that exists among bloggers and their readers.

While I'm getting my morning rant in, I'll also agree with Jake. It can be amusing to go somewhere where people are prepared to go "LOLSONYTARDS" when a stupid story comes along, rather than cleanly reporting it, but other than that they are very much poor journalists and poor bloggers. Pay someone for quantity and not quality, and all you get is this constant surface-level inspection of the situation. "Here's a link, and here's my kneejerk reaction to it! Now let's move on to the next hour's story!" I'd hate it if blogs ever became a replacement for real news, like so many of them aspire to. Even a tabloid has editors and quality standards.

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The issue I think, is that Kotaku is not elitist enough and has crap in the comments anyway.

yes what i was thinking, why have an invite system when the comments are full of the same crap you get on other sites that have open comments

checked out 4 color rebellion, hadn't heard of that one before looks decent

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I only read Eurogamer, the Shack and Gamasutra nowadays.

How very similar to my click pattern. Have you read any Eurogamer-sister-site gamesindustry.biz recently? They appear to have kicked their Feature section into high gear in recent weeks. There's been some good stuff, e.g. Mr. Consolevania on games TV.

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[Kotaku] seems strongly founded in this cult of self-importance that exists among bloggers and their readers.

This is why I shut down my blog a couple of years ago and never restarted it; it's far too easy to be lazy and slide into this way of thinking, and convince yourself your right in doing so, too.

So, instead, you now have me clogging up the odd quality forum instead... :mock:

why have an invite system when the comments are full of the same crap you get on other sites that have open comments

Now you guys point it out, I think that might be the real rub I have with this invitation-only scheme - the dickheads still appear to be getting in. Isn't the invitations scheme very friend-of-a-friend though, rather than by written recommendation? For example: if I've received an invite and then signed up, I can go ahead and invite e.g. my potty-mouthed, know-nothing 12 year old hick kid brother to comment as well? Hugely flawed if that's the case.

So yes, in hindsight; not elitist enough is right.

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So yes, in hindsight; not elitist enough is right.

I think that the only time an invite system would work was if those invited were very few and took the job of commenting a bit seriously (not excluding humor though). The thing is that then you don't really have a comment system anymore, you have something that functions in the same way as the Thumbs "Screw that guy"-feature. I'd think this was a good thing in most cases, but probably I'd feel like there wasn't any point in calling it an invite-only comment system any more, since it's basically just an extension of the article.

Maybe I'm not making sense here though. Reading all that makes me wish I hadn't written it in the first place. Oh well...

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Maybe I'm not making sense here though. Reading all that makes me wish I hadn't written it in the first place. Oh well...

No, I think maybe we're all getting somewhere with this.

What about peer review upon redemption of an invitation? The editors would obviously pick a bunch of people they like to begin with, and furnish these people with invitations. If you're invited, you must submit a short piece of writing and must have that positively vetted by the majority of existing commenters before being allowed to run amok on ths site proper. Sure, there are possible manpower overheads with the review process. But that's where leveraging the existing community comes in. (I appreciate this would still be open to "in with the in-crowd" abuse if the vetting process were not properly - not to mention maturely - supervised.)

Sticking with the community idea--but as an alternative to the above vetting system; if the site had background forums (that didn't interfere with the editorial comments), you could selectively promote members to 'commenter' status, based on what they've submitted in the forums.

I think both of those ideas might go some of the distance in eliminating the "less productive" commenters, who're still getting through the rather ambiguous invitations system. Nothing to say privelages couldn't be revoked later on either.

Edit: In fact, the whole of the above could be handled via a wiki--including the peer review/voting (and revoking) system.

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This is getting really stupid. You seem to be verging on interviewing prospective commenters. Systems which are gated prior to entry are arrogant and only select for people who have an overinflated sense of their self-worth. Since when did commenting on a website get to be worth so much that you had to go through an application process?

And this is exactly the kind of 2.0 thing I detest - rather than looking to what has historically worked and going from there, you're just plucking concepts out of thin air as if this is the first time the problem has been tackled and as if there have never been any successful solutions.

The stuff that works are systems that filter after commenting has taken place, rather than before it. Be ruthless about trimming useless comments, but don't delete them - flag them as offtopic, hide them, but give people the option of showing them. Reward good comments by making them more prominent. Support some kind of threading or hierarchy to allow conversations to have more structure, both for participants and for people who are considering joining in. Oh snap, I just described Shacknews and several other perfectly well functioning message boards.

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Please don't misinterpret what I'm saying; I'm not advocating their lock-out system, nor trying to bolster it. I'm simply thinking out loud concerning less obstructive, more productive alternatives if they simply must limit access to the comments system.

At least with something that requires you to make an effort before being admitted gets around the "so-and-so commenter is my best mate, so I'm equally as important" thinking.

I still hate the idea that very few people get to say their piece, especially on sites which prop their daily posting quotas up with thread-bare speculation and blatant rumour-mongering. This is one of the reasons, as I mentioned before, why I've ditched Kotaku specifically.

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Ah okay, fair enough. I think what you are coming back to is that you need moderators. You need people there to make the call on quality. If comments add so much value to your website, pay someone to moderate it. If they don't, turn them off. If you're stuck in the middle ground, where your comments are wildly popular but not enough to spend money on, why not channel some of those commenters' enthusiasm and the low value they place on their freetime, by entrusting them with moderating for free. Moderators are still a status system, but one that isn't so elitist and pretentious.

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Have you read any Eurogamer-sister-site gamesindustry.biz recently?
It's basically the flipside of the same coin.

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Both of those are pretty hard to read though. Blue's News, and Shacknews to a lesser extent, could really use a redesign.

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