User-submitted comments on news media articles are terrible. They are the worst development in the whole trend towards "interactive content."
They are to the internet what a fart is to a long elevator ride.
Anyone looking to user comments to gain insight into anything is just a sucker for punishment. It's a cesspool of misinformation and vitriol.
I wish news media websites would just do away with them or change the format into something more like a moderated message board where users can quote and respond to other comments, and a single user can be held accountable for his/her previous comments rather than having each comment being treated as a one-off anonomous rant. Problem is that I doubt the newspapers would want the responsibility of maintaining something like a message board.
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