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Comment by fixermark | Hacker News Reader

The Google Toolbar project had a feature called "sidewiki" that did the same thing. https://searchengineland.com/google-sidewiki-allows-anyone-t...

It got dropped in 2011, sayeth Wikipedia; criticism included that it pulled control of comments away from a site publisher and gave that content (and data) to Google.

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If it was dropped in 2011, I suspect the criticism also included the fact that every site in the world starting having their own comments section, rendering the thing kind of pointless.

...which a large number of them subsequently dropped for a multitude of reasons, varying from the deluge of spammy comments to the desire to keep unwanted opinions off the site. A universal non-censored and politically neutral comment section would actually be a good thing if only it could be kept from turning into a shit-fest. How the latter can be achieved without ending up with censorship in one way or another is a question which thus far has not been answered anywhere on the 'net.

I'd posit the extreme likelihood that "uncensored" and "not a shit-fest", as time approaches infinity, are mutually exclusive.

"Shit flows downhill," as it were. If some sites are kicking people off who (however one chooses to measure the concept) "diminish the tone" of the site, and some sites are not, it stands to reason the sites that do not will end up collecting the sort of comments that "diminish the tone" over time.

Yes, that is an unfortunate side-effect of opening up to each and everyone no matter their tastes. Not all is lost though, if they manage to implement a functioning moderation system which allows individual users to limit their exposure to 'shit' they might just pull it off. It should be possible for users to choose a level of exposure, something ranging from 'cesspit' to 'spring water' and everything in between. The default should be just above 'cesspit' so that the most odious comments are 'greyed-out' by default but can easily be seen by those who want to. This should make the system less sensitive to the various forms of group think which moderation systems often stimulate. I had a look around and saw it was possible to 'Block' and 'Report' comments or commenters, this is a start but it probably needs to be fleshed out for the site to have appeal to a larger public.

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