In honor of our fleet of clever first-responders, we're happy to announce one long-overdue feature new to Defamer: Comments of the Week! Every Friday, we'll shine a spotlight on five of our favorite contributions from the commenter braintrust. Here's our inaugural batch of winners:
We've introduced a couple of new features to Gawker comments. (1.) If you're checking for the latest discussions to be started on any post, just click the Newest first link. You'll see the discussion threads in reverse chronological order. Like this. Just refresh the page to see new discussions as they pop up rather than having to page through to the end of a chronological list. (2.) If you're coming to a post for the first time, try viewing by Most active first. That way you'll see just those comments that have elicited the most replies. Like this. We're going to make use of the two new features during this evening's first presidential debate which will be liveblogged here from 8.30 ET.
Multimillionaire CNET founder Halsey Minor is in the news again, for another spat over his expansive art collection. Portfolio explains that Minor got into an "angry email exchange" with famous artist Damien Hirst. There are now "gaping, fist-size holes in the plaster walls" of Minor's San Francisco offices, where Hirst's work used to hang. This comes as Sotheby's is suing Minor over a disputed art auction. After the article ran online, Minor left a rambling comment quibbling with details. But he never disputed the story's central question: Has Minor spent so impulsively and unwisely on art, real estate, new startups, and a new wife (Shannon, pictured with Minor, above), that he's running short on cash? He doesn't answer that. Instead, he declares himself "the baddest psycho in bass fishing." The comment seems as delusional as this moment he recounts in the story:CBS chairman Sumner Redstone walked past him at the Bel-Air Hotel, shortly after CBS bought CNET for $1.8 billion. Minor hasn't been at CNET since 2000, and wasn't involved in the sale. So why would he expect Redstone to recognize him? Nostalgia? Pity? Portfolio reports on Minor's many difficult relationships; he told the magazine that Gateway founder Ted Waitt, formerly an investor in one of Waitt's startups, is no longer a friend. Add to the list of those difficult relationships: Minor with facts. (Photo by Rob Howard/Portfolio)
Victory! Earlier, we argued that newspapers should stop slumming as blogs and disallow comments on their websites. Now, at least the Maui News has. "Dear readers," the letter from the publisher begins. "Due to flagrant abuse of the privilege—including continual name-calling, crude language, profanity, slander, threats and racism—the Maui News will no longer allow comments to be posted on its Web site... the volume, frequency and vileness of the abusers' postings have grown beyond the newspaper's capacity to remove them in a timely manner." If readers can't handle nice things, they will be taken away! [Maui News via Romenesko]
THE GAWKER MEDIA OFFICE, NEW YORK — The rows of sleekly designed desks to my left are suspiciously quiet. The technical corps of our publisher, Gawker Media, is feverishly working on an update to our comments. And I'm here to witness it all! The big change: Related comments will be displayed together, as a "thread." And instead of being displayed oldest to newest, comments will be grouped by relative activity; the most tangled threads will get shuttled to the top. Update: We've decided to undo this change, displaying threads in chronological order, oldest to newest. The theory behind this: Threading is a way to make comments read more like conversations instead of a bunch of disconnected single replies. Participating in a thread is easy; instead of replying "@" another user, you can now join a thread by clicking the large circular "reply" arrow. And if you want to start a new thread? Just comment as usual. More details:
That Lewis Black show Root of All Evil, in which two comedians orate about two awful things and then Black decides which one is worse, tackles blogging in its next episode. King of Queens shlub Patton Oswalt is tasked to excoriate the dreaded medium and offers a pretty well-tread argument about how grammar and decency and experience and all that goes out the window and blah blah. There is a funny bit where he imagines Thomas Jefferson n' Pals signing the Declaration of Independence and then foolishly allowing an extra "comment scroll" so people could voice their opinion. Basically it's a build up to a joke about not wanting to fuck Sally Hemings with Betsy Ross' dick. Oh commenters! Everyone hates you. I mean not as much as they hate us. But, you know. There's hate. Watch Patton's statement above and below is Lewis Black's little opening anti-blogging rant. Can we find some new people to be mad at? Let's just go after all the iPhone users, OK?
Commenters, it has been noted, are the single greatest threat to freedom facing America today. They are mean and libelous and should be rounded up and deported to Narnia. From YouTube to the New York Times, commenters are useless noise machines and racist cowards, and their mothers would be ashamed of them if their mothers weren't also forwarding nonsensical conspiracy theories to blog editors with CCs going out to Tom Brokaw, Perez Hilton, and Iron Man. But it turns out that sometimes commenters are awesome! Like on this BBC story about a court in New Zealand that took custody of a 9-year-old girl so that it could change her name from "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii" to something New Zealanders consider more normal, like "Number 16 Bus Shelter." "You've been telling us about your unusual names," the BBC says. "Below are a selection of your comments." The first one is from someone claiming to be named "Russel Sprout" who says that his unusual name has helped him "make friends and improve my confidence," and they only get better from there.
Let's begin with some truisms: a newspaper is not a blog-not even its online version. Conversely, a blog is not a newspaper. However, newspapers have been in the toilet lately, partly due to the proliferation of blogs. One easy pseudo-solution some newspapers have settled on is to act more and more like blogs. After all, this 2.0 world is all about "You," the user, which in practice means it's all about a false sense of democracy through publication of comments and user-generated content-just like a common blog. After the jump: why newspapers should stop slumming as blogs and disallow comments.
Okay, it wasn't a case actually involving Valleywag, but ConsumerAffairs.com. Virgina judge Gerald Bruce Lee cited the Communications Decency Act in absolving the Web site and company of any liability for user complaints about car dealerships in Fairfax, Virginia. The commenters themselves, however, are still liable for defamation and libel lawsuits, so be nice! Or at least take steps to preserve your anonymity. Not a commenter on Valleywag, but would like to become one? Read our FAQ. We especially love folks who send us tips, preferrably from inside the belly of some Valley tech beast.
John McCain's campaign store is a treasure trove of hideous merchandise and, briefly, hilarious commentary. The comments on each item were clearly totally unmoderated, which is always a treat. Would you like to buy some John McCain-branded golf balls? How could you not after reading reading reviews like this: "The downside is that these golf balls almost feel like they've been painted over something that was once pasty white and older than one might think. If I press hard enough I think I can feel some scars, but then again it's never a good idea to press too hard on one's balls. Nevertheless, it might be why these balls tend to get stuck in quagmires or sand." There is so much more! At varying levels of maturity and humor!
The most beautiful cable news anchor of all time ever is 41 years old today. Maybe his mom will come by the studio to sing to him? Or maybe mean Mrs. Clinton will ruin his party by making him report "news." Sigh. [HuffPo] (After the jump, we'll share some birthday wishes for Anderson from HuffPo commenters.)
Newly softhearted Gawker Media head Nick Denton offers some kindly advice for TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington: "@Michael Arrington: Hey, everybody has been expecting the grand roll-up ever since you hired Heather. I don't see it happening. Certainly don't see it sticking. And, without a roll-up, you have a niche Valley site with some 3% of the traffic of Gawker or Weblogs Inc. Good luck with that when the tech bubble bursts!"
"Could someone please go up and punch Al [Gore] in the face? Then, when he calls the cops, ask him why he didn't try the UN first." — TV pundit Rachel Marsden, Valleywag's newest bestest friend fatale, splashes cold, conservative Canadian water in the faces of our NPR-numbed Bay Area readership [Valleywag Comments]
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and chairman Bill Gates have it all wrong trying to take on Google by buying Yahoo. What they really need is "an underground secret team" that works in "a new office building in Cologne" and includes " John R. Coza." Also, they need to hire "as a sort of mascot / good luck guy" bigdowro, the commenter who had this prophesy and kindly shared it with the rest of us in 443 words. It's my favorite bizzaro dreamscape since Coleridge's Kubla Khan and its pasted below.
