It’s amazing how long folks can ignore reality. On Wednesday, Nov 30, The New York Times announced a new version of their commenting system that still sucks.
They say it is about “improving the community experience” but it is really about assuaging their own egos. Let’s be honest here and point out that thousands of websites have no problems and several have developed systems that often make them better than the content.
Yet, here is the preeminent newspaper in the country and they are just now putting their comments on the same page as the article, and they are introducing threaded comments. LOL. The New York Times website, nytimes.com, was created 17 years ago in 1994, and they are just now making these changes?
Of course, the blogosphere is not even upset about this, rather it is the new “trusted commenter” function:
- Trusted Commenters enjoy the privilege of commenting on articles and blog posts without moderation.
- You must receive an invitation to become a Trusted Commenter. To be invited, you must have a lengthy history of comments that are thoughtful, discuss the issues politely and address the topics covered in the article or blog post.
Privilege…are they for real?
The truth here is that they are the problem, not us, the commenters. They don’t want to deal with their community or they think they are above it. Ivory tower and all that.
Maybe in the next 17 years of their web presence will they get over their revulsion of us lowly commenters.
I’m terribly vexed.