Well done so far! I wish you every success in making 538 the go-to site for readers who care about facts and careful analysis. May I offer a suggestion? In the most controversial article youve published so far ( fivethirtyeight/features/disasters-cost-more-than-ever-but-not-because-of-climate-change/), I notice that many of the comments veer toward the sort of ad hominen arguments that pollute most mainstream comments. It would be wonderful to see 538 break some new ground on that front, too. Perhaps you could draw some ideas from stackoverflow, a question and answer site for programmers, that has done a remarkable job of getting posters to stick to positive contributions. The key seems to be their reputation system. Among other things it restricts the ability to downvote and to offer comments on other posters answers until a new user has gained some positive reputation by posting questions and answers that get upvoted by the community. Your sites situation is somewhat different, of course, but still I think theres opportunity to innovate with a system along the same lines for establishing and maintaining a reputation score among commenters that places meaningful restrictions on comments and/or article ratings.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 16:11:09 +0000