gpapadop

The pace of content posting has been blistering. I predict he is prepping it for sale by the end of the year.

Full Disclosure: I have been wrong before in my predictions. Lol

CarringtonEvent

Hey Ben, how are you doing?

HadesNL

Come on, that is stale,

Adam1222 is not Ben,
Especially if you take the courtesy to read Adam's blog versus Ben's blog.

That aside about comments,
I do see on OMAAT that "infamous" DCS is being spoofed by DeeCeeSSS and dcs.
John at LL has already started to curb such heckling, yet on OMAAT it starts to run amok.

Even Matthew from LALF has pointed out free speech in the comments is vital,
but stresses out that there are limits.
https://liveandletsfly.com/death-of-reader/

CarringtonEvent

^Had no idea that happened. Could've done without Matthew's sermon (which makes me even less inclined to read his blog moving forward), but I admire him for having treated the deceased person equally.

oliver2002

Mudslinging in the comments leads to more page views and people come back to read the same blog post over and over. Censorship or switching comments off (TPG) is counterproductive to SEO etc.

Adam1222

​​​​​​Ben is wealthy enough that he doesn't need to subject himself to the kinds of nasty name-calling that some people think he is required to allow in the name of "censorship." Many people are also turned off from participating in web discussions when such "mudslinging" is tolerated and goes unmoderated.

Sometimes, being a good human being is the right thing to do even if it leads to less clicks.

Raffles

I read LALF’s suicide piece with a ‘there but for the Grace of God’ view.

I also accepted his views on free speech.

I then scrolled to the comments section. It was a cess pit.

Some people need to learn that de facto stifling discussion from the sensible majority because you let a few loons run amok is not free speech, indeed is almost the opposite.

oliver2002

Normally I never read the comments section in newspaper articles... its pretty much always a cesspool. Be that as it may, the comments section is a big factor for the metrics of a site.

Astrophsx

I actually think Ben's site is a nice compromise between TPG (removed comments completely) and Fox News (cess pit). With only showing two or three comments and making the viewer click to read the rest, they are essentially opting in to reading that stuff. I don't run a blog, but perhaps a good business decision?

Raffles

What about the reader who wants to opt-in to a civilised discussion on the original post? What do they click?

We are very aggressive in blocking people and it works well.

GUWonder

Perhaps when a miles and points site becomes big enough to reach some kind of critical mass threshold, then maybe the audience engagement via comments isn’t as important to a site and the business can huff and puff along without as much user huffing and puffing — even if a directional change toward and exacerbation of silencing has adverse consequences for the long term vitality of a site as a business.

Scoring own goals by wiping out comments is something that could be said about a lot of sites beside just the miles and points blogosphere. It usually seems more likely to happen upon a site reaching maturity and slowed growth but enough revenue to keep owners and their coattail riders happy enough that they think that more editorializing or even getting out of a bunch of audience contributions is without negative consequences.

CarringtonEvent

The thing is, Ben's site and TPG are vastly different publications. TPG is more or less a commercial content farm, with posts that are largely not very engaging anyway (even if they are well written and produced). Ben, on the other hand, posts a lot of clickbait-y, superficial stuff that is practically useless, but gets people talking. He could only shut down comments if he fundamentally recalibrated how and why he makes content. As it stands, he doesn't share enough things with substance or longevity to make comment-less posts tenable.

GUWonder

OMAAT may have to return to the kind of content that grew his business in the first place or change modes if such return isn’t possible and sustainable.

fartoomanyusers

Yours is one of the few sites where I actually read (and contribute) to the comments

However you manage to achieve a (mostly) sensible discussion seems to (mostly) work !

Raffles

1. Write sensible content to attract sensible people

2. A zero tolerance policy on non-constructive comments

I suspect implementing 1) is harder than 2) for most sites …..