The Comments Section

The comment hosting service Disquis has long been one of my mortal enemies. Many versions refused to load comments properly, or resulted in so many script problems it would often freeze or crash my browsers. At a certain point I got so fed up that I had to block the platform entirely for a few months. The trouble is that Disquis has become a default for many sites like CNN and Wired. A.V. Club uses Disquis and recently went through a design upgrade that rendered the comments inaccessible for me from Internet Explorer and Firefox. They still work on Chrome, for the time being.

Then there's Slate, a webzine that recently decided to make itself more mobile friendly and decided to go with a layout that makes it look positively godawful on a desktop. Seriously, is it that difficult to host different sites for mobile and web browsers? Anyway, one unintended consequence was that the Slate comments section is also kaput for me, specifically on the version of Internet Explorer on my work computer. Slate has their own site-specific commenting system, but every time I try to use it, the text box and scroll bar elements come up in the wrong layer. I can see how many comments should be there, but I can't actually see any comments. It's been frustrating, to say the least.

I've realized since losing the comments sections on these sites how important they are to my experience with them. A.V. Club in particular has one of the most well-moderated, well-behaved communities I've ever seen on a media review site. There are joke and pun threads, but you also get good, solid, serious discussions that can go into much greater depth than the review or article that it's commenting on. It's often difficult to find articulate, intelligent fans who have something interesting to say about any particular show or movie, but A.V. Club regularly attracts hordes of them. And you're as likely to see them debating "Adventure Time" as much as the latest episode of "Homeland."

The Slate commenters tend to be more hit-and-miss depending on what the topic is, but I find them invaluable for some of the regular features like the "Dear Prudence" advice column written by Emily Yoffe. For "Prudence" the commenters often provide a fascinating counterpoint, debating the value and the applicability of the offered advice, questioning if situations have been misinterpreted, and pointing out possible alternatives. It makes for a far more interesting read than the column by itself. So when the comments section became impossible for me to use, I became less inclined to read the latest installments of "Dear Prudence."

And then there's Deadline Hollywood, which is overrun with minor show biz minions sniping at each other, but it's fascinating to watch them try to construct these elaborate, ridiculous narratives that push their own agendas. The weekly box office reports are always a good source of entertainment, thanks to them. Or there's the perpetual war between Republican and Democratic commenters on any FOX News story, which tend to be more illuminating than the actual content. Social media sites like Reddit and Twitter can be viewed as just one big comments section for content from all over the web.

"Letters to the Editor" have existed long before the internet, allowing individuals to correspond with the content providers and resulting in plenty of interesting discourse in major newspapers and magazines. However, the internet has really turned the feedback into an integral part of the way many people consume content. Now it's not just carefully selected letters that get published, though some sites like the New York Times online edition still curate their comments, but everything that makes it through the spam filters and the mods. You get a much more accurate sampling of reactions, and quicker too.

You'd think that I'd be pretty active in these comment sections considering how much importance I place on them, but I'm not. I had a Disquis account at some point, but only used it very rarely. I never signed up for an account at Slate, and for most of the websites I have signed up and gotten verified for, I almost never actually use the comment sections. These aren't forums that I feel very comfortable expressing my opinions in, though I'm glad for the commenters who do.

You see, when I get fired up about an article or a review enough to actually want to share any comments, my responses tend to get way too long and involved to be appropriate for the average comments section. They tend to turn into essays. They tend to turn into blog posts. And the feedback turns into legitimate content. And I guess that's just how the internet goes around.

Well, except for Disquis. That's definitely still broken.
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