The Daily Brainstorm

Most news sites have come to treat comments as little more than a necessary evil, a kind of padded room where the third estate can vent, largely at will, and tolerated mainly as a way of generating pageviews. This exhausted consensus makes what Gawker is doing so important.

—Noted technological genius Clay Shirky • On the value of Gawker’s new commenting system, which he says serves “the people reading the comments, rather than the people writing them.” Gawker’s commenting system avoids the traditional route of giving everyone’s comments equal weight, and it also avoids the route of having regulars dominate every single conversation. Rather, it focuses the conversation on the two or three best comments, with Shirky noting that this approach runs against what usually happens — where the guy on the soapbox, not the site itself, calls the shots. Is this the right way to go? It’s certainly interesting, either way. (via shortformblog)

(via shortformblog)