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Polygon (internet website)

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Polygon did get a fair few snarky comments on that Halo 4 / Pizza Hut story but deleted a bunch (and changed the header image for something a that looked a little less like a high streed restaurant food chain logo) when things got a little too rambunctious for their liking.

You could say that they pressed re --

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Wait, did that picture actually originate in Polygon?

Maaan... They are off to a bad start.

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Yeah it seems weird to hold your head high about how you're resetting games journalism, especially after everything that has happened, and then delete comments that criticise you. If they were honest in making a nicer looking version of Kotaku, I would have been fine with it.

It's a shame because The Verge is one of the best sites on the internet, imo.

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The Polygon Pizza Hut pic was cropped from a Pizza Hut / Halo 4 publicity image.

Unfortunate timing meant that the promotion was posted on Polygon (among numerous other websites) and flung into the GeoffKeighleyDoritoPope jouPRnalism Squenix IntentMedia whirlwind at maximum velocity.

This review went down rather well though: http://www.theaveragegamer.com/2012/10/30/halo-4-stuffed-crust-pizza-review/

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Polygon did get a fair few snarky comments on that Halo 4 / Pizza Hut story but deleted a bunch (and changed the header image for something a that looked a little less like a high streed restaurant food chain logo) when things got a little too rambunctious for their liking.

You could say that they pressed re --

I personally think people should exercise more control over comments. Somewhere along the way it became considered "dishonest" or "uncool" or something to delete comments. I think that's total nonsense. I wish people would delete rude and obnoxious comments from their content. If someone has a reasonable critique, then fair enough, but if it's just "You suck! You totally didn't understand! You idiot!!!" then it's just adding another bit of shit to everyone's day.

I remember the good old days at the beginning of the internet where people were, you know, pretty damned nice to each other, and that was partially because moderators were like; "Coming to my website is like coming to my house. Respect me, and all my other guests, or get out."

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I personally think people should exercise more control over comments. Somewhere along the way it became considered "dishonest" or "uncool" or something to delete comments. I think that's total nonsense. I wish people would delete rude and obnoxious comments from their content. If someone has a reasonable critique, then fair enough, but if it's just "You suck! You totally didn't understand! You idiot!!!" then it's just adding another bit of shit to everyone's day.

I remember the good old days at the beginning of the internet where people were, you know, pretty damned nice to each other, and that was partially because moderators were like; "Coming to my website is like coming to my house. Respect me, and all my other guests, or get out."

I agree. If they're deleting comments that are pointing out it was kind of sketchy, that's not cool. But I have no problem at all with actually moderating comments. People are jerks on the Internet.

Speaking of respecting the owner of the house and its guests, I have this problem at work all the time. It's just depressing how rubbish people will behave unless they're essentially ordered to conduct themselves.

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I remember the good old days at the beginning of the internet where people were, you know, pretty damned nice to each other....

When was that again? DARPAnet? :-P

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All the comments that were hidden were reinstated and then the thread was locked. You can see them all on the current version of the article. They all seem like pretty reasonable criticisms to me. The tone is sometimes not very polite, but there's clearly nothing "horrific and bigoted."

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All the comments that were hidden were reinstated and then the thread was locked. You can see them all on the current version of the article. They all seem like pretty reasonable criticisms to me. The tone is sometimes not very polite, but there's clearly nothing "horrific and bigoted."

Being not very polite is a perfectly valid reason to delete a comment, if you ask me.

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It's certainly a good excuse for deleting a comment that makes a point you don't want expressed.

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Better not to have comments at all if you're going to pick and chose which ones suit you better. Politeness is a matter of subjective opinion and sometimes when someone disagrees strongly you can find that as impolite as being personally insulted. It's a slippery slope, to point out the obvious.

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I don't agree that politeness is subjective, at all. I would have no problem with a site deciding it was going to kick comments that weren't being civil. However, The Verge comments are constantly rife with completely bullshit flame wars and other crap, and Vox has never shown any interest in editing those. As far as I can tell, Polygon doesn't have a track record of curating comments. So, that would call this particular issue into question.

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Better not to have comments at all if you're going to pick and chose which ones suit you better. Politeness is a matter of subjective opinion and sometimes when someone disagrees strongly you can find that as impolite as being personally insulted. It's a slippery slope, to point out the obvious.

I agree with IrishJohn. Rudeness is rudeness.

But this type of thinking is precisely what I'm talking about. For some reason people seem have developed this odd sense of entitlement: "I should be allowed to say whatever the fuck I want on your website!". Erm. No, you shouldn't. A website is private property. The owner has final say on whatever they want to be seen, and that's precisely how it should be. And quite frankly, I wish more people would make use of this power.

I think the "You're in my house" analogy still stands.

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I don't mean for things to get too cozy in here but I'm with ThunderPeel all the way. I can't stand the idea that people feel they can act like dicks and then get incredibly entitled and butthurt when someone says "I don't like it when people are dicks on my site." Again, I'm not convinced this Polygon example fits it, but on the wider question I completely agree. Frankly, if you're going to write something down online that you wouldn't say to the person's face, you're being rude and in no small way a coward.

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A website can obviously do whatever they want. It's not entitlement to have an opinion of free speech. And if I think a website that purports to support 'community', private as it may be, is likely to delete a comment because they don't agree with it, I will simply stop visiting that website.

If idlethumbs started deleting comments that were say, critical of idlethumbs, the situation would be the same for me. I would simply stop participating, because sites that do that end up turning into boring echo chambers.

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The RPS crew have talked about this a bunch. Their take is the "you're in my house" analogy, which I totally agree with. A little moderation goes a really long way, apparently. RPS comments aren't perfect, but they're the best of the bunch. Heck, it's the only website I bother commenting on.

Sites like Verge and Polygon annoy me because extremely obvious flamebait gets a pass. I mean, any article even vaguely related to Google/Apple bursts into flames over the same snide comments every time. Even if there were something constructive in there, it's been lost. IMO that is a boring echo chamber.

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I support turning comments off completely in those cases. There are plenty of portal sites that occasionally turn off comments for news pieces that are likely to bring in the raging hordes.

I'm not saying don't delete obviously racist, sexist awful comments, but 'rude' is a subjective description and I've outlined why I feel that way.

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I'm not saying don't delete obviously racist, sexist awful comments, but 'rude' is a subjective description and I've outlined why I feel that way.

I agree. There's not a single comment on that article that I would personally consider even close to deletion-worthy, so knowing that several of them were deleted makes me distrust that website. You can put up a "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" sign in your business, but that doesn't make you immune to criticism if you do it without a good reason.

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I think all communities eventually die if they don't find a way to maintain a level of civility with one another. Some communities need good moderators to keep the level of discourse reasonable. I think this is especially true of high traffic sites like Polygon or official forums for popular games, like MMOs. Some communities probably need to have entire comments and threads deleted, but it's entirely dependent on the size of the community. Self policing communities are great, but they don't scale especially well past a certain point. On the other hand, being too heavy handed with moderation quickly kills smaller communities. Community wrangling is an art in a lot of ways; it's important that a balance be found.

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Agreeing and trying to fix things is good, disagreeing and standing your ground is good, and I'll let someone off for ignoring stuff like this, but deleting comments is really shooting yourself in the foot.

I get people complaining at me about all sorts of stuff, but I'd HATE to turn into the "haters gonna hate, if you troll me I'll just block you" type.

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I am very much on the "you're in my house" side of the issue; it's basically impossible to build a good community without that community having some way to defend itself from malicious actors. Honestly I think the threat of overzealous moderators basically boils down to their comment thread sucking, and I find it very hard to get upset about something that's basically self-regulating.

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