I Disagree, You Stupid Racist Fascist Sheep
Read it all here.
Looking for a public space full of nasty rhetoric? It’s hard to beat the comments sections next to online articles. These spaces, for all their great potential for exchanges, often devolve into flame wars with commenters attacking the writer, and each other, personally.
In this way, the web is like a 2.0 year old. It’s become more social. It can express simple thoughts. But it’s not very good at listening yet. Commenting interfaces on the web makes us all look like two year olds to each other — and we often respond by acting like we’re toddlers.
Why? One reason is that our designs make it far easier to speak into comment boards than to actively listen through them. We need a way to counteract the misunderstandings that often fuel flame wars –without resorting to censorship. And to do that requires tackling a major problem with online commenting: people speaking on reflex without listening deeply.
We can’t make people listen online. But we can encourage deeper listening. How? What if there was not just a comment box after an Internet story, but also a listen box?
[…]
Read on for a description and a couple of videos about how this works.
It’s not needed at a well-moderated blog like Little Green Footballs, and I don’t think it would be effective at a swamp like Yahoo News. There must be a market for it somewhere in between. In the article is a link to a page where “Reflect” (the name of the commenting system) can be downloaded for trial.