Gawker Media founder Nick Denton (known for his blogs including Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9, and Lifehacker) spoke at South by Southwest Interactive about thoughtful discussion through global communication.
“The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership -- that's a joke.”
He goes on to say, “I don’t like going into the comments. … For every two comments that are interesting – even if they’re critical, you want to engage with them – there will be eight that are off-topic or just toxic.”
Although critical of online comment sections, Denton had no clear solutions to the problem and was quick to shoot down possible ideas. I don’t blame him though because I don’t believe there is a simple solution anywhere within immediate reach.
One idea that Denton proposed is having a hand-picked, pre-approved group of people to comment on certain stories. While it is a noble idea I believe it dabbles too much with elitism and even censorship to a degree.
Regardless of having a solution in sight or not, public online discussion is an interesting topic that will surely be around for a long, long time.
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