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Is the comment section of a web site the best place for a civil and unlighted debate on scientific issues ?
Even trivial scientific/technology discussions turn into a cesspool of spambot, trolls, bullies and stupid and insulting comments.
I'd rather be phishing!
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So moderate it. If you have to, do what some sites do and moderate all messages before publication.
Burning all letters unopened because you don't want your wife to see the credit card bill is hardly the ideal solution! 
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
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Who will moderate the moderators?
MVVM # - I did it My Way
___________________________________________
Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011
.\\axxx
(That's an 'M')
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Rorschach!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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MVVM # - I did it My Way
___________________________________________
Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011
.\\axxx
(That's an 'M')
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Maximilien wrote: Even trivial scientific/technology discussions turn into a cesspool of spambot, trolls, bullies and stupid and insulting comments.
There is no right which does not have a negative side.
And not to mention of course is the fact that this is Popular Science which is specifically targeting the mass market.
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OriginalGriff wrote: moderate them as we do to reduce or remove their impact and dump them off the site.
Which then leads to cries of censorship.
Some of those morons think they are correct in debating science of which they have no expertise or in many cases, even any knowledge of.
I had a friend who used to try to tell me he could figure the location of Atlantis without needing to do research or field work.
I just tuned it out, but I'm sure others would jump on the bandwagon.
As I've gotten older, I've become convinced that education has been wasted on the masses. They may have gone to school to memorize a few facts so they can pass a test and then forget them, but most of them never learned to think.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Years ago, we had a (very, very) junior PCB assembler that we took on for a couple of months between school and him going off to travel for his gap year. He believed pretty much anything on the then new internet - including that the UK and US governments had come to an agreement with Aliena that the could make crop circles, take cows for food and the occasional human for research... He didn't like it much when we referred to this as "aliens travelling 200 light years for a Big Mac".
Mind you, he was educated - just thick-as-a-brick: he knew he'd need money to travel around India, so he was saving all his wages, and buying everything on a credit card instead... 
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
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BrainiacV wrote: I had a friend who used to try to tell me he could figure the location of Atlantis without needing to do research or field work
So, was that his(her) way of saying, "Go, jump in the ocean!"?
Without doing any research I think I can definitively say that it used to be an island on Earth, probably close to Europe.
I can definitively say it is or isn't an island on Earth.
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Pretty sure Atlantis is in the Pegasus galaxy...
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Interesting where "research" leads you: www.atlantis.com[^]
Searching for "Atlantis Pegasus" didn't find anything but suggested "Atlantic Pegasus" and searching there found other resorts. Therefore Atlantis is a resort. (Yea, right, and "she" is dating a French model.)
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What do you mean it didn't find anything? Googling "Atlantis Pegasus", the very first result points to what I was referencing. So does the second... and the rest of the first page. (Hint: Sci Fi T.V. show. I was making a joke.)
But yes, Atlantis is a name for a resort these days. I've seen the ads.
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The story takes a bad turn when years later he crashed his truck. When they x-rayed his neck, they found a shadow they investigated further and found he had a brain tumor the size of an apple.
It was so sad, he'd call me from the hospital to tell me he had figured out gravity and the physicists had it wrong, but he couldn't explain it in words.
He didn't last much longer after that.
It made me re-examine all the goofy stuff he used to tell me, but I knew him over 30 years and he was always like that.
Now when I hear people spouting crazy stuff I wonder if they have a tumor as well. Can't be that many of them, can there?
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I've spouted crazy stuff all my life. Because of a health issue I had an MRI 4 years ago. My brain was unusual, but no tumors.
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KP Lee wrote: My brain was unusual, but no tumors.
I've lost count of the number of CT Scans and MRIs I've had.
Besides being a unique individual, it seemed I had a unique physiology. I had PSC, where the vessels coming from my liver and gall bladder were small and thready. Only 4 in 100,000 have it.
A doctor performing a test on me got confused and failing to find that vessel, may have injected the radioactive dye into my pancreas (which shares the vessel) instead. This led to months in the hospital and and over the years, ultimately to a liver transplant. Soooo looking forward to them being able to bioprint me a new one someday to get off the immunosuppressants.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Wow, you had it worse than I did. My regular physician couldn't figure out what she was reading, so sent me to a specialist. My problem was completely different, I had more blood vessels in my brain than normal, but nothing to be alarmed about. I figured that was why I used to be smarter than most and may have caused my drop in brain function. There is no way I could take the SAT test now and score in the 98th percentile in math nationally.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: Thoughts/comments?
I have thoughts, but commenting on them isn't allowed anymore.
But really, it sounds like the problem could be solved with better moderation instead of silencing everyone.
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..and Science takes another lumbering step towards becoming the Catholic Church.
While I agree the owners of the site are free to do whatever they want with comments I think they may have over estimated their impact on the public discourse. There isn't a policy that is going to trot through the public marketplace of ideas without getting smeared.
For example: the global warming debate hasn't become an international poop storm because of comments on that journal's website.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: Thoughts/comments?
Isn't this vaguely ironic?
Anyway, most comments I've seen were completely useless. Even this one.
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harold aptroot wrote: Isn't this vaguely ironic?
Precisely the effect I was aiming for.
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From Article: ...commenters are shrill, boorish specimens of the lower internet phyla.
Sounds remarkably like my time spent at a popular Apple forum trying to work around an iOS7 bug this morning. I saw a discussion rapidly deteriorate into complete mayhem over the use of the term "bricked". The poor poster was insulted and jeered mercilessly and never once had a member of the site offer anything remotely useful to solve his issue. (No, it wasn't me.)
After seeing that reminds me that Code Project is a great place to be.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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Thought you might be talking about[^] 
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"We also plan to open the comments section on select articles that lend themselves to vigorous and intelligent discussion. We hope you'll chime in with your brightest thoughts. "
They still keep the door open to enable comments for select articles/topics.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Maximilien wrote: They still keep the door open to enable comments for select articles/topics.
Which they select. And I bet they will also turn off comments to those as well for reasons which they choose.
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I think it is the right decision, most the time people don't want to debate or discuss intellectual issues they just want to throw up BS that isn't germane (yeah I know a big word for me) to the issue.
Unless it's a forum where there are mostly regulars and can be self moderated like the lounge it just doesn't work. I say self moderated because I'm sure they don't have the resources to moderate and baby sit.
It's a shame though that someone with a real issue of insightful (yeah another $5 word) bit of knowledge is now silenced because of the 5% that think the internet is the place to be a child.
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