Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

Guardian website cockup

The Guardian has just altered its "Comment is Free" website and introduced what is called "threading". Responses are gathered together instead of being in chronological order. This seems to be unpopular - an overall look at the number of comments suggests that there are less than half the number there were before.

In addition making navigation difficult, the threading system has led to fragmentation of discussions to the point of meaninglessness. The comments have degenerated into one-liners. It may have seemed like a good idea, and if the aim is to stifle discussion, it is a good system. The Telegraph used it too, but I have stopped going there anyway since they put themselves behind a pay wall.

Around three years ago, the quality of the comments was often better that that of the editorial pieces, especially those by the Guardian's old war-horse regulars. Some of the same people are still commenting but there has been a falling-off, possibly also due to changes in format, the most important being the ability to view "newest first". The original system gave an advantage to the early posters but that allowed discussions to develop coherently until they tailed off after a couple of days.

If the aim was to stifle public discussion and close down a forum of debate, the redesign has done the job perfectly. But then open debate can threaten the powers-that-be, and the Guardian is just as much a part of the system as the more openly oppressive political "right". 

Kommentarer

Skicka en kommentar

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

Battery trains fool’s gold

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows. “I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair? ” My reply was as follows... Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre veh...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer