25hoursaday.com — Comparing the comments on Slashdot story Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source to the ones on the Digg story 7 Reasons Microsoft Loves OpenSource on the same topic, it seems that there is a sharp contrast in the quality of the comments posted by the users of the site. In fact, the Digg comments remind me of the following comic on XKCD.
Apr 30, 2007 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountApr 30, 2007
I, for one, think that in soviet russia this blends/ also....// RTFA///Lulz
kpliciousApr 30, 2007
Was this post removed from the upcoming stories list?
seinjunkieApr 30, 2007
I'll agree that by raising the bar significantly on default settings, Slashdot is a much more informed discussion than Digg is. I was greatly disappointed when my initial posts didn't gain much traction when I started there. However, since the moderation system increases the barrier to entry, commenters are required to learn the ropes and get in tune with the community at Slashdot. This is especially evident by witnessing the granularity of the moderation. At Digg, your insightful comment might gain the same +1 that someone else's lame joke received. Slashdot provides the reader with the opportunity to filter out certain types of posts without reading them.I'm sure it helps a little bit to have the stories selected by editors. Though they are by no means perfect, they do a decent job of keeping the conversations shown on the front page interesting. Digg's got a long ways to go before it will be considered anything more than the kids table.
seunosewaMay 1, 2007
I think the comments on reddit.com are better than slashdot, and that may be because it does not have too much traffic. Do people seriously read slashdot comments?
cvosMay 1, 2007
Slashdot only allows commentors who have received positive votes to moderate, while digg allows anyone to moderate or vote on comments.It is so easy to vote on digg comments, the votes are often poor quality.