In a small community where people collectively want to foster good discussion, comments can succeed for a while. I think it's impossible to sustain that if the community grows or if they lose their focus.
No community I've ever seen, apart from MetaFilter, has kept the noise level low enough that participating in the community is enjoyable. Hacker News was great a few years back, but it's painful to watch now. Same for every other site I've known: As the community grows, discussions degrade, and people get hostile.
People don't have a lot of insight. So when sites open up to comments, the typical comment — which may be perfectly average for humanity — is trash. People have agendas and biases. Most people don't see it, or don't care, so they don't correct for them.
Commenting systems and algorithms can hold back the tide for a while. They can force out people with a net negative impact on the community. But in the end, attempting to sustain good discussion is a losing battle. It's so easy for good discussions to turn bad, for intelligent arguments to become baseless, for disagreements to become personal attacks. Humanity as a whole isn't capable of rational, reasoned discussion at scale.
No community I've ever seen, apart from MetaFilter, has kept the noise level low enough that participating in the community is enjoyable. Hacker News was great a few years back, but it's painful to watch now. Same for every other site I've known: As the community grows, discussions degrade, and people get hostile.
People don't have a lot of insight. So when sites open up to comments, the typical comment — which may be perfectly average for humanity — is trash. People have agendas and biases. Most people don't see it, or don't care, so they don't correct for them.
Commenting systems and algorithms can hold back the tide for a while. They can force out people with a net negative impact on the community. But in the end, attempting to sustain good discussion is a losing battle. It's so easy for good discussions to turn bad, for intelligent arguments to become baseless, for disagreements to become personal attacks. Humanity as a whole isn't capable of rational, reasoned discussion at scale.