That actually makes me sad: good automoderation tools are decades (plural, yes) old and yet most website haven't caught on the fact that you need some sort of ranking to filter out spam or bots.
Thing is, newspapers as their business model currently is, have zero incentives in having quality comments. Negative incentives actually. Journalism is 20% facts reporting, 80% comments and that's generous: comments are the cheapest to write, some news website/papers are closer to 99% comments. If you have quality comments by your readers, what are you selling then?
We need to move to a business model where facts reporting and facts checking (careful: talking about facts checking, not analysis checking) are the primary services that journalists would get paid for. Comments, even quality comments can be done through a good enough moderation system and a big enough community.
Thing is, newspapers as their business model currently is, have zero incentives in having quality comments. Negative incentives actually. Journalism is 20% facts reporting, 80% comments and that's generous: comments are the cheapest to write, some news website/papers are closer to 99% comments. If you have quality comments by your readers, what are you selling then?
We need to move to a business model where facts reporting and facts checking (careful: talking about facts checking, not analysis checking) are the primary services that journalists would get paid for. Comments, even quality comments can be done through a good enough moderation system and a big enough community.