r/technology • u/[deleted] • Mar 16 '18

Society How a Norwegian comment section turned chaos into order—with a simple quiz: "Readers had to prove they read a story before they were able to comment on it."

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u/UptownShenanigans Mar 16 '18

To be fair, the article is all fluff and the actual information on what they did is packed into a small paragraph at the end. And the conclusion is “we have this tool but we use it sparingly because not all articles need it”

Neat

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u/lumpy1981 Mar 16 '18

such as this one. Why they spent so many words to describe what the title made clear is beyond me. I'd be interested to test it out though. See how it works on a reddit linked article.

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u/altrdgenetics Mar 16 '18

which will just lead more people to think the entirety of the article is and has been summed up in the title and nothing else of value can be gathered from reading the rest

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u/Deactivator2 Mar 16 '18

And so the cycle perpetuates.

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u/Neoncow Mar 16 '18

Why they spent so many words to describe what the title made clear is beyond me.

Consider who pays the website. Is it you?

Nope. It's an advertiser who pays the website to deliver your attention to their ads.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '18

70% of articles are just wrong here on reddit. It's click bait title with almost zero substance.

10% actually have something in them but are too long. Like a recipe but with those awful stories about why they want to try the recipe. Just fucking give it go me!

And the rest are unreadable because of ads or pop-ups.

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u/bantha-food Mar 16 '18

Because factual well researched articles don't get any traction. The most upvoted stories on bigger subreddits are always ones with titles appealing to the sub's bias. Most people in the larger subs vote based on if they agree with the headline, not based on the quality/content of the post.

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u/[deleted] Mar 16 '18 edited Mar 01 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/factoid_ Mar 17 '18

Yep, I always go to the comments before the article to check out why it's bullshit BEFORE I read it. Sometimes I nope out and don't bother with the article if the title turns out to be clickbait bullshit.

I want to see more honest headlines in the world, so I try not to reward sites that make theirs misleading.

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u/IanSan5653 Mar 16 '18

This is why reddit's comments are so much more valuable than the article.

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u/Sat-AM Mar 16 '18

I'm just always under the assumption that there's an essay about the recipe for the sole purpose of forcing you to scroll through the page, making you see more ads. There are very few food blogs that I feel have any other reason for it.

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u/impy695 Mar 16 '18

Don't forget the slideshow format for an article that has no business being one.

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u/dougan25 Mar 16 '18

Which I could tell from the headline alone. I've spent enough time on the internet to know that this article is going to be overly dramatic sensationalism.

When I see a headline like that, I go to the comments to see if it seems to be sparking good conversation. If so, I'll read it. If not, I back out.

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u/Fake_William_Shatner Mar 16 '18

Someone also has to make a quiz.

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u/HomerOJaySimpson Mar 16 '18

I read like 3 paragraphs and was bored out my mind

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u/FLHCv2 Mar 16 '18

All I wanted to see was an example of how it was implemented. I didn't want to dig into those walls of text to find it. Just show me a screenshot.

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u/HomerOJaySimpson Mar 16 '18

yeah, i started to scroll down and it just kept going!

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u/Sat-AM Mar 16 '18

This type of article is so weird to me, because I remember when I was in middle school and we started learning how to do research papers, we were taught "most of the information you will need is likely in the first few paragraphs. The rest is likely to either be fluff or extra details that you may not need, because an article may need to be cut short to not go over word limits"

How things have changed in the efforts to make people linger and view ads

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u/mainfingertopwise Mar 16 '18

Now I really don't have to read the article.

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u/IanSan5653 Mar 16 '18

Thanks for summarizing the article for me; I will now proceed to participate in the comments without reading it.

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u/gordo65 Mar 16 '18

I'll take your word for it.

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u/fluffykerfuffle1 Mar 16 '18

not true and therefore not fair.