Popular Science is turning off its online comments section:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/why-were-shutting-our-comment…
.
Why? Turns out, incivility ruins people's ability to think clearly and
rationally:
"Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a
participant's interpretation of the news story itself.
In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the
technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions —
continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to
rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding
of the risks connected with the technology.
Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to
make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was
greater than they'd previously thought."
Food for thought...
(h/t to Jared Zimmerman)
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Maryana Pinchuk
Product Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org