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For example, *every* single comment on HN (or Digg or whatever)? Especially the ones that are ott flames in context?
In lieu of the i/o plumbing that I'm sure is in the near future, do commentators owe the author at least a "heads up" that there's another convo happening, especially if there's serious criticism being leveled?
- aggregation of comments into rating schemes or sentiment
- culling comments together from multiple blogs/sites
- zaget style "extraction from comments"
- organizing posts by individual contributor, or other factors
- repackaging comments into "SEO pages" (An increasing Yelp habit to improve their SE visibility
Any added thoughts?
I think the real world equivalent is more like ownership of ideas and comments made at conferences & cocktail receptions.
Does the hotel hosting a conference retain rights to the content presented? Does the conference organizer? Or does the presenter of the session? Or the audience member who made it?
How can we help turn this straw man into cast iron?
However we proceed - universal code or not - I just want to know how each discussion forum (spoken, hard copy, or digital) will treat my contributions. With an upfront, well communicated policy, we can all decided whether or now we want to share our thoughts in that space or not.
third party comment systems like yours and others makes this easier and that's a good thing.
grammar I was taught in school. Just sayin'. :)
More formal writing is used in the actual policies.
I don't think commenters should be able to edit or delete after a certain typo-edit period. The blogger and the other commenters have rights too.
We did something similar at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education with a Donor's Bill of Rights (http://www.case.org/Content/AboutCASE/Display.c...), which was endorsed by a group of folks.
I wonder if there is a larger bill of rights that should be discussed as there are more publisher addons than ever before.
Great minds think alike, friend. We've been talking abut that larger case before this particular "commenter" issue came up. The concept is still early, but we want to get as many pertinent minds involved as possible. Maybe you'd be up to chat about this.
out because I only had 3 hours of sleep in the last couple days.
I'm glad Disqus is looking to the public for information and advice regarding a gray area. After all these are the people (bloggers/commenters) who will be using the tool.
I don't think the commenter should have the right to edit or delete their comments. That's like changing history...
"c) The modification of a comment, as long as the original copy is still accessible and the edit is transparent"
...then the original comment would stay intact, right? So the history is still there after the comment is edited.
Let's say hypothetically we're all eating around the dinner table and I blurt out "these mashed potatoes are horrible". Later I feel bad for saying the mashed potatoes are horrible so I fine tune my statement to say "these mashed potatoes taste different, they're not exactly like mom used to make".
The "history" of my first comment is still there, so it's not changed totally. Having said that I think when it comes to "rights" as the term is used so loosely I would err on the side of giving the content creator the ultimate right to delete or edit the comment in any way they wish. After all, first comes the content and the commentary comes as a result of the content. Let's not get that part twisted.
I think chartreuse would be the right next hire for disqus as conversation evangelist. not joking.
The initial assumption here is incorrect; comments are not blog posts. Never will be. I certainly agree that *some* comments can stand alone and that those could be re-posted on blogs though I would caution bloggers that you don't win too many friends when you seek to control a productive discussion by hijacking it onto your blog. 'nuff said on that topic. It's certainly a comment author's right to republish their comment and "blog this comment" is a feature disqus should probably consider adding.
A comment is a part of a conversation. Altering a comment alters the conversation. The conversation does not 'belong' to the person that left the comment. Allowing users to remove or edit their part of a discussion will take you on a short-trip to moderator hell in a vibrant community (I learned this the hard way.) I personally believe the best implementation allows comments to be edited (for typo's etc.) only within a limited window of time (say, 10 min's) and thereafter, edits are disabled.
I was a fan of disqus but honestly, with this post, you've lost my trust. Disqus has an obvious bias for controlling comment content and that bias dents your credibility in this discussion; please reconsider your position on this issue.
>> I personally believe the best implementation allows comments to be edited (for typo's etc.) only within a limited window of time (say, 10 min's) and thereafter, edits are disabled.
Yes, there should be (and are, with Disqus) limits around editing.
>> Disqus has an obvious bias for controlling comment content and that bias dents your credibility in this discussion
Did you read the blog post? I'm not being snarky as it's a serious question. It was stated repeatedly that we don't need to control the content to achieve our goals for the service.
>> please reconsider your position on this issue
What position? We never stated a position. I wrote about some thoughts I had to provoke an interesting discussion on where this could head.
With regard to efliv, I think that a 'either 'publish in entirety or delete' choice to publisher's is extreme. What is nefarious in editing for brevity or grammer or spelling (if indicated).
Technological Question: how can the commenter edit the comment once its been published on someone else's blog? How can they access it if the blogger shuts down?
Editing is entirely up to the capabilities of the blogging software, and the discretion of the blogger. Most of the big packages (eg, wordpress) provide this capability.
If the blog is shut down, comments go away. There are a couple of work arounds -- one is to use a third party service like Disqus which will (hopefully) be around for a long time. Another is to keep a backup of your own comments ... which is a pretty tedious prospect.
I know that sounds convenient for us, but hey, I believe in what we do.
Is there anybody in this discussion who actually has any expertise in the legalities in this matter? Not that what is legal really changes what *ought* to be, but it helps to set a foundation from which we can derive the appropriate deltas to get to where people *want* to be.
Back to the current train of thought, I think the person who wishes to maintain close ownership of his comments will actually post them on his own property (i.e., blog) and then link back to them. The person who jumps into the fray on somebody else's property (the blog hosting the comments) is agreeing to whatever terms that host has established for the ownership of such content.
The technology ought to allow both approaches to be treated as first-order participants in the conversation.
But some don't maintain a blog or would like to directly participant
in the discussion on the blog. I'm not a lawyer and I'd like to hear
more about the legalities.
It seems like there's two things that are needed to get traction --
First is a simple way for the blogger to signal to commenters what the policies are for the blog, something similar to the Creative Commons icons that quickly and clearly conveys a mix of capabilities and responsibilities.
Second is to continue promoting this discussion. It seems like a no brainer for the majority of people who participate in online communities, but I hadn't really *thought* about it until I ran across this discussion.
I'm glad Disqus is raising the issue. :)
Suppose a school has a policy of not identifying students in published photos. They would moderate comments to avoid somebody unfamiliar with the policy innocently mentioning the name of a student pictured. I would want to be sure that while that comment was awaiting moderation, nobody but the commenter and the moderators would see it anywhere.
Agreed.
b) Access to all of their comments, even if it has been deleted on a blog
this is little self serving, no? as the blog owner, I feel no obligation to make a comment available indefinitely. As the publisher of the blog, I should be able to delete a comment if I choose to. Commenter has the right to publish his/her comment elsewhere. just not on my blog.
c) The right to use their own comments as blog posts. After all, a commenter is just a publisher not writing on his own website.
Agreed.
d) A life for the comment beyond a single blog. I want to take my comments with me, even if the blog shuts down.
again self serving. you may just as well say, all comments should use Disqus :) the blog owner should be in control of the blog. now that we have aggregators, comments can never be really deleted anyway.
It's just something to think about. We think about this all the time
over at Disqus and we'd like to get more input from people.
However, I do not think that this will anytime soon be set in stone. For example, I think there will be many situations in which "discussion moderators" (someone who has admin rights to a blog or a forum could be said to have become implicitly a moderator of any discussion there) would want comments to be non-retractable, which technically comes down to being non-deletable by the comment poster. I think this will be highly situtation-specific.
There could be many more nuances which would apply in different situations.
All in all, this is certainly a good begin for discussion. I guess most of this will remain never spoken-out though. I think it would be best to investigate and formalize existing implicit norms.
However, I do not think that this will anytime soon be set in stone. For example, I think there will be many situations in which "discussion moderators" (someone who has admin rights to a blog or a forum could be said to have become implicitly a moderator of any discussion there) would want comments to be non-retractable, which technically comes down to being non-deletable by the comment poster. I think this will be highly situtation-specific.
There could be many more nuances which would apply in different situations.
All in all, this is certainly a good begin for discussion. I guess most of this will remain never spoken-out though. I think it would be best to investigate and formalize existing implicit norms.
I think the real world equivalent is more like ownership of ideas and comments made at conferences & cocktail receptions.
Does the hotel hosting a conference retain rights to the content presented? Does the conference organizer? Or does the presenter of the session? Or the audience member who made it?
How can we help turn this straw man into cast iron?
Agreed.
b) Access to all of their comments, even if it has been deleted on a blog
this is little self serving, no? as the blog owner, I feel no obligation to make a comment available indefinitely. As the publisher of the blog, I should be able to delete a comment if I choose to. Commenter has the right to publish his/her comment elsewhere. just not on my blog.
c) The right to use their own comments as blog posts. After all, a commenter is just a publisher not writing on his own website.
Agreed.
d) A life for the comment beyond a single blog. I want to take my comments with me, even if the blog shuts down.
again self serving. you may just as well say, all comments should use Disqus :) the blog owner should be in control of the blog. now that we have aggregators, comments can never be really deleted anyway.
I feel that if proper credit is given to the originating website, that comments can be quoted just like anything else, so long as the person who wrote those comments is also credited. A public comment on a website is just that, public, and should be allowed to drift to other places, despite the author's original intentions.
Thus, my opinion on "commenter's rights" tracks what Jerry Garcia once famously said about the Grateful Dead's policy on allowing taping and trading of their concerts: "Once we're done with it, it's theirs."
Really, it's the conversation as a whole that is important and not any one part of it. More and more the content is going to be portable to different distribution methods. The concept of blogs+comments is outdated. The conversation is mobile, and that movement is unstoppable. It's more important to figure out how to embrace that movement and take advantage of it than it is trying to figure out who owns what.
My feeling exactly.
We need to take steps toward this, however. People are familiar with a
certain structure. An abstract notion of "conversation" and its
distribution is difficult to make sense of now without getting people
thinking about these basics.
"c) The modification of a comment, as long as the original copy is still accessible and the edit is transparent"
As a commenter, I don't like the idea of a blog owner editing my own thoughts, whether those edits are transparent or not. Perhaps I feel this way because I can't think of a good example where this would be needed and I'd welcome some examples.
In my opinion the blogger should have a boolean decision to include the comment or not, but not to edit it. Further expanding, maybe disqus could make this a setting in the user's profile, something like 'allow editing of my comments by blog owner y/n.'
Keep up the good work.
As a commenter, I agree with you.
As someone who ran a couple of larger sites in the past, I know that sometimes the blogger/owner needs to have the ability to "pull the plug" on a comment. I had to deal with racist and inflammatory remarks on some of my sites, and I was glad to have the option to cut some discussions short.
Now, this has nothing to do with censorship in my book, but with upholding common sense. You can ask your visitors to play fair and nice all you want, and while usually 99% of them will happily uphold your own standards, it's a fact that there are people who simply do not understand certain rules.
(See John Gabriel's GIF Theory for a very quick summary.)
Sometimes it's simply necessary to act, because when someone visits your blog or site, they are, in a way, visitors to your home. The house is still yours. You wouldn't allow your real life visitors to smash your windows and soil your carpets. You'd probably take action to stop them.
I think having the ability to clean/edit a comment (while retaining the original comment, since it belongs to the commenter) is a crucial feature for a blogger, but I'd like to see it in a way that
a) makes it clear and transparent that the comment was altered
b) allows the reader/visitor to still read the original comment
Just my two cents.
Again it shows that I shouldn't participate in deep discussions when tired. I am making a fool out of myself.
So yes, deleting/hiding single comments would be sufficient.
issue up to us.
Publishers may need to make superficial edits, such as fixing URLs or
egregious typos. I agree that they should control how things are shown
on their own blog, but the original context of a commenter should be
preserved and easily accessible.
to do so, I feel the option should be open to them as long as the
commenter's words are left intact.
The blogger wants to include the comment but not the third party's contact information. If they can't edit it, they must either reject the comment outright or contact the commenter to edit their own post (assuming they can given the commenting platform). A busy blogger might decide to save the time and just reject it. The conversation suffers.
two ... i cringe when i see dumb things i wrote in the past, right there in print for all the world to see. to be able to delete is good, at least off of the equivalent of the disqus history page (which could use some more context, too)
three ... ownership ... i know that i am dependent upon grace for the very thoughts that come into my mind, and for the ability to write them down, and for whatever happens to them afterwards. i really am just a channel, for better or worse ... so i don't want to own in the sense of possessions, them, they are not mine. but i do want to reuse them sometimes in other contexts, especially when new ones haven't come along that are better!
preserving my uniqueness of contribution can have value, no doubt, but the most valuable thing happening now is not "my" ideas in more places, but the flow of the ideas themselves! we are entering into a new dimension in human communication, for all the reasons we all know, and the flow is replacing the person.
this process is the one that i am most excited to see technology develop around, that the flow of ideas is more important than the individual instigator of the idea. many changes are hidden in this new reality. which is way cool
Maybe the start of Web 3.0?
Editing is entirely up to the capabilities of the blogging software, and the discretion of the blogger. Most of the big packages (eg, wordpress) provide this capability.
If the blog is shut down, comments go away. There are a couple of work arounds -- one is to use a third party service like Disqus which will (hopefully) be around for a long time. Another is to keep a backup of your own comments ... which is a pretty tedious prospect.
Maybe the start of Web 3.0?
The recipient of one's comments shouldn't be compelled to keep them around, just as they aren't compelled to publish them in the first place. If you consider the comment spam case, it's even more important to give the blog owner control of this piece.
If the commenter wants a copy of their own thoughts, they can certainly archive it themselves.
Keep up the great work at Disqus! I'm a big fan of the service.
How much does Disqus in it's present form recognize these points?
We're behind in the software implementation. Right now, commenters can
edit and have comments attributed to them, so (a) and (d). The other
two have been implemented and will show up in a future release.
I don't mean to make this seem like everyone has to use Disqus. We
hope people do because we enable better discussion on blogs, but these
ideas are generalized for everyone's input whether or not they use
Disqus.
We need to take steps toward this, however. People are familiar with a
certain structure. An abstract notion of "conversation" and its
distribution is difficult to make sense of now without getting people
thinking about these basics.
I know that sounds convenient for us, but hey, I believe in what we do.
issue up to us.
Publishers may need to make superficial edits, such as fixing URLs or
egregious typos. I agree that they should control how things are shown
on their own blog, but the original context of a commenter should be
preserved and easily accessible.
If I (as a blogger or product developer) fail to offer someone the ability to edit a comment, am I violating their rights? If, when I shut down my blog sometime in the future, am I a bad person if I don't make the comment content available for the original commenters?
These seem like *great* features, don't get me wrong-- but they don't sound like RIGHTS. They also sound a lot like features that Disqus already offers... :-)
IMO, a commenter has creative rights to their, content. Period. They can copy it, make a plaque with it, paste it elsewhere, build a blog post around it, etc. But I'm not willing to agree with the statement that I'm violating someone's rights by not making these features available.
However we proceed - universal code or not - I just want to know how each discussion forum (spoken, hard copy, or digital) will treat my contributions. With an upfront, well communicated policy, we can all decided whether or now we want to share our thoughts in that space or not.
That said I do believe the following
1. Commenter should have the ability - not a right per se - to edit or delete any comments they have made
2. Blog owners should never have the right and/or ability to edit a commenters words but they should have the right and ability to delte them from their blog.
3. A blog owner should never be under any obligation to maintain any comments made on their blog. If they are using a third party comment platform it is then the responsiblity of that platfor only if the commenter has become a member - but that is another whole legal issue IMO. There should never be any guarentee that anon comments will be maintained under any condition.
I also agree the tools like Disqus should be considered as a platform and is something that I have always referred to it as so as far as any legalities of what the platform provider is obligated to is up to them and their lawyers. However those legalities must be made available via the platform providers site and should have a link available to be displayed within the plugin.
loosely. Mostly so I can use that image up top.
Good thoughts though, thanks.
I think chartreuse would be the right next hire for disqus as conversation evangelist. not joking.
Now all I'm waiting for is the implementation. :-)
If you are insinuating our ownership of these comments, would it be possible to institute a kind of public rights licensing?
For example, if I wish to note that my comments are in the public domain or even licensed under Creative Commons.
Ether some metadata in the profile or feed, or even just a notice similar to flickr, perhaps.
A layperson may not care, but those who are inclined will.
It's content and part of the persons identity, both off an online. To take comments in and out and to hold it close to us makes it ours.
I like how you acknowledge that hosting != owning.
You guys got it right. Its good, but we will have to see what the future holds.
If you are insinuating our ownership of these comments, would it be possible to institute a kind of public rights licensing?
For example, if I wish to note that my comments are in the public domain or even licensed under Creative Commons.
Ether some metadata in the profile or feed, or even just a notice similar to flickr, perhaps.
Letting people retroactively edit their own comments could lead to tremendous confusion, making conversational threads very hard to follow. A Wiki would allow for that, and at least the reader of a Wiki knows that he should not make strong assumptions about who said what, in what order.
On the other hand, having the ability to delete one's own comments is worth thinking about. (The more I think about it, the harder this problem is! What an interesting issue!)
It would be really unfortunate if it were too easy to make it look like someone (say, me) said a certain thing, whereas he never did say it. Having some way that I can protect my own name and reputation is important to me. I don't want someone to make a bogus comment that appears to be from me but says something of which I would not approve.
When people put comments on my blogs, I like to have the ability to make tiny copy edit fixes, such as changing "It's" to "Its" and that kind of thing, to make it easier for everybody else to read. If I had to lose this ability in order to support some greater goal involving integrity and authorship, though, I'd be willing to.
I definitely need the ability to decide to accept or reject comments that appear on my blog. I reject comments that are spam, utterly irrelevant, or highly offensive; everything else I approve, even if I disagree and even if it's kind of nasty. I often put in my own comments in answer to other comments.
One thing's for sure: the rules of the game should be well-defined and easy for anyone to look up. Transparency is not a cure-all but it's the first step.
Kudos for thinking about this. I hope you'll eventually look over this whole discussion and create a paper, or blog posting, or something, that summarizes the interesting ideas herein.
I wonder if there is a larger bill of rights that should be discussed as there are more publisher addons than ever before.
My belief is , the blog owner can do what he feels best, if it is deleting the so be it, it is his blog, if you don't like it then do post there, However that will eventually back fire for him, since we all know that the true conversations come from not censoring, so it is his lost.
The alternative is to use services that track comments and make a copy of them, so even if they are deleted they will still be able to be read somewhere else, such as in cocomment, not sure if disqus does the same.
Those are my thoughts.
i do this from time to time. not to fragment a discussion but to log my output (if i think its worth logging).
this is mainly for my own benefit but also is good for those who may find their way to my site.
i link back to the original post and to my comment url when doing this.
i would like to see disqus add integration to cross-post my comments on disqus powered sites to my own site (ie. tumblr). it's easy to do. i prefer NOT to add another widget or suck in a comment feed into my site because i dont want every comment i make added to my site.
one problem with comment services such as disqus is the fact that for it to be 100% effective, everyone should be using the same comment service. this isn't the fault of disqus or any other service of course. but it's the reality of the situation.
i don't know if it can be truly solved unless the "service" is not a single private company... like say if the Mozilla Foundation setup a solution for commenting... maybe even built into the Firefox browser.... that could be more adoptable and universal. Or I could see a Google or Yahoo or Amazon even.... or a federation of all of these types of entities.... agreeing on standards and semantics.... providing something that makes adding a comment and allowing that data to be movable and portable as desired.... as an automated platform that can be initiated on any web page. In other words, a Non-Profit effort. Because at some point, Disqus and other start-up companies need to make money and that only introduces potential annoyances into the commentsphere... a space currently untouched by monetization engines for the most part. The question of "How do you make money from the millions of comments on the open web" is interesting. If at some point ads are injected into comment threads in order to sustain the companies that have decided to provide comment services... it wouldn't necessarily be terrible, especially if revenue is properly shared with all people involved in th thread (yes i said ALL ;) and the "sponsor" posts are clearly marked as such... well... that's the business of it really. I'd prefer it not get inundated with advertisements but am aware that it can be done in an elegant manner.
So comment services like disqus here are approaching this very large frontier. I'd be willing to bet that Google (or other BIGGIES) are developing similar service and am actually surprised that they have not already released something a year or 2 ago. They have left this space open to tech entrepreneurs. Well let's not forget that they can and will buy the best of breed (you are working for google before you work for google).
Oh and I do agree that I dont like the idea of my comments being edited by others.
If so, my original post needs to be accessible. If that original post contains content that is not suitable for public consumption or simply offensive etc... then the comment should be rejected with an easy way for me to edit it and resubmit so it can be reconsidered and published.
Apologies for the ranty comment.... not sure if this one is blog worthy :)
Self-hosted platforms already give publishers the ability to edit
comments. Since your comment is on someone else's blog, they are free
to make whatever changes they see fit.
What I was personally proposing is an amendment to that ability. If
publishers *do* edit comments, the original content should always be
accessible and presentable.
they were once familiar with, as long as a commenter still retains
their original content.
they were once familiar with, as long as a commenter still retains
their original content.
It just struck me that even as a Disqus Administrator, I can no longer edit any comments (apart from my own) although I can remove comments.
So, let's forget this earnest discussion of 'commenter's rights', what about the rights of Administrator/SuperUser/Root/God and other deities ?
Shouldn't I be omnipotent and all-powerful in my one man crusade, striving, against all odds, for correct grammar and punctuation as I continue to fight the good fight (unpaid too) against dumbing down and so called 'text speak' ?
they were once familiar with, as long as a commenter still retains
their original content.
they were once familiar with, as long as a commenter still retains
their original content.
Your "Rights and Control" fit perfectly with what I wanted to convey on my site www.restaurantsinpr.com .
Thanks!
Your "Rights and Control" fit perfectly with what I wanted to convey on my site www.restaurantsinpr.com .
Thanks!
Your "Rights and Control" fit perfectly with what I wanted to convey on my site www.restaurantsinpr.com .
Thanks!
Best regards
Nulos
http://thenewsempire.com/Gaming/
But, the blog owner should also inform the commenter about the comment that he/she posts..
But, the blog owner should also inform the commenter about the comment that he/she posts..
thanks for sharing. really helped a lot here.
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