Re: *******
To tell the truth... a few days ago I was looking at the comments at the bottom of articles in more or less random "mainstream" news sites. It was an interesting exercise.
Now, having in the past worked in an occupation that gave me access to people's private lives across all socioeconomic classes (emergency services), I am well aware that humankind is still a remarkably primitive species, but even so I was wondering if comments on those sites are not bot-generated. I do not know why they would be, but they just seemed too gratuitously malicious for someone to actually bother writing that kind of stuff.
In hindsight, at least on El Reg one can have some sort of reasoned discussion with some regularity (although even here, at certain times of the day when moderation is not so active, you do get to see a small sample of the kind of stuff that mods have to deal with--respect to them).
So in short, if a small outlet such as El Reg can invest on policing what gets posted in the interest of maintaining a minimum of decency (along the lines of "do not be an arse"), then surely bigger organisations can do at least as good a job of it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
