Ever since they began allowing readers to comment, websites have been wrestling with a major conundrum: Commenters are often terrible, but they also increase traffic -- at least theoretically. And with ad revenues increasingly difficult to generate, anything that boosts traffic is hard to let go of. And so, the terribleness remains. Several sites, though, are taking different approaches to the problem, from eliminating comments altogether to actually elevating them to the level of professionally produced content.

    The latter approach, by Gawker, doesn't intuitively seem like a recipe for success if the idea is to make websites less depressing places to visit, but it might actually work. Sadly for those of us who, in the early days of the popular Internet, believed that we were on the threshold of a new era of high-minded dialectical conversation, many comments sections -- particularly on well-trafficked sites -- are sewers. On those sites -- which include YouTube (GOOG) and some of the country's biggest news organizations -- when comments aren't hateful, they're disruptive. When they're not disruptive, they're boring, pointless, or off-topic. Every so often a commenter will have something useful to say, but on too many sites, a worthy comment is so rare as to be de facto nonexistent, lost in an ocean of bile and bad grammar.

    There are sites where the comments aren't so bad, and indeed are often as worthy as the content itself. Usually, those are smaller sites that have a narrow focus, like, just for one example, the tech-news site Ars Technica. As always, bad comments appear there, but they're in the minority, and most users at least stay on topic and often add to discussions started by the site's articles. But for most sites with large readerships, drawing people in from all over the place -- including what we might call "drive-by trolls" -- comments are worse than useless.

    Gawker's approach, a project called Kinja, is designed to keep the better commenters on the site rather than taking discussion of Gawker's articles to more controlled environments like Facebook (FB) and Twitter, as has been increasingly happening as people flee the open Internet, where the worst actors too often set the pace. Under the scheme, which Gawker founder Nick Denton has been working on for about a year, readers vote on the comments, and the most popular rise to the top and are featured on Gawker's various homepages, alongside staff-written articles. That might seem dangerously close to essentially exploiting free labor -- sites from the Huffington Post to Bleacher Report have been lambasted for doing so -- but the idea is to separate out the best from the worst, pushing the worst down by raising up the best. Users get their own homepages, over which they are in charge -- even having the ability to write their own headlines on Gawker posts. It helps that, comparatively speaking, Gawker's comments are generally (and perhaps surprisingly) not all that bad in the first place.

    Meanwhile, YouTube -- the poster site of horrifying Internet comments -- is addressing the problem by tying user accounts to their Google+ profiles and changing the way comments are displayed. Currently, comments appear in reverse chronological order, which means the chances are good that the first comment you see under a given video will be horrifying or idiotic. According to the YouTube blog post introducing the changes, "recent does not necessarily mean relevant." The example given is if Justin Timberlake were to comment under a video of his (unlikely as that might be), it would be buried over time. No longer. The new system will highlight "conversations that matter to you." 

    自从网站开始允许读者发表评论以来，它们就一直在努力克服一大难题：评论者的声音往往特别难听，但他们也带来了流量——至少在理论上如此。鉴于广告收入越来越难以获得，任何能够提升流量的事物都是难以割舍的。话虽如此，一团糟的评论江湖仍然存在。但是，一些网站正在采取截然不同的措施来解决这个问题，有的网站完全取消评论，有的网站则将评论摆放在与专业制作内容相等的位置上。

    为了让网站变得不那么让人郁闷，掴客网（Gawker）选择了后一种做法。这种方式从表面看似乎不像是成功的秘匙，但它或许真的管用。互联网普及的初期，一些人相信我们即将迎来一个网民们进行高尚的辩证式对话的新时代。让这些人悲哀的是，许多留言板，特别是一些流量颇高的网站的留言板，俨然已成为下水道。在这些网站（包括YouTube和一些最大的新闻网站），评论就算不是充满恶意，也是是破坏性的。而如果评论没有破坏性时，它们往往又很无聊，毫无意义或偏离主题。评论者偶尔会说一些有用的东西，但在太多的网站上，有价值的评论往往是凤毛麟角，淹没在了一片谩骂和病句的海洋中，以至于消失于无形。

    一些网站的评论没有那么糟糕，它们的价值实际上往往并不亚于内容本身。通常情况下，这些都是一些关注面狭窄的小网站，比如科技新闻网站Ars Technica。一如往常，差劲的评论也会出现在那里，但只是少数。大多数用户至少在关注相关主题，而且常常会参与网站文章引发的讨论。然而，绝大多数拥有庞大读者群的网站往往是各色人等的聚集地——包括一些“飞车钓鱼党”（drive-by trolls）。这些网站的大量评论往往跟主题风马牛不相及，一无是处。

    掴客网正在实施一个叫Kinja的项目，以期把更好的评论者留在网站。它没有像Facebook 和Twitter那样，把网站文章引发的讨论置于受到更多控制的环境之中——随着人们纷纷逃离开放式的网络环境（在这种网络环境中，起领头作用的通常都是最差劲的参与者），这类举措越来越多。根据这项掴客网创始人尼克•丹顿已实施了大约一年的计划，读者就评论进行表决，最受欢迎的评论上升至顶端，并连同写手撰写的文章一起置于掴客网不同页面的显著位置。这种方式的本质似乎非常接近于利用免费劳动力——很长时间以来，《赫芬顿邮报》（Huffington Post）《看台报告》（Bleacher Report）等网站因这种做法而被骂得狗血淋头——但这样做是为了去芜存菁，提升最佳评论的地位，借此打压最差评论。用户拥有自己的主页，他们不仅可以掌控页面内容，甚至能够在掴客网撰写自己的头条文章。起到帮助作用的是，相对而言，掴客网的评论本身通常并没有那么糟糕，这一点也许令人惊讶。

    与此同时，以惊世骇俗的评论闻名于世的YouTube正在尝试着通过将用户账户与其Google+个人资料信息捆绑在一起，同时改变评论的显示方式等措施来解决这个问题。这家视频网站的评论目前是按照逆时间顺序排列的，意味着你在某段视频下面看到的第一个评论很可能是令人恐惧或愚不可及的。正如YouTube就改变评论现状发布的博文所言：“最新评论并不一定意味着最切题。”这篇文章给出的例子是，如果著名歌星贾斯汀•汀布莱克在他自己的某段视频下面发表评论（这种情形不大可能出现），随着时间的推移，这段评论就将被淹没。以后不会再这样了。这套新系统将凸显“对人们有意义的对话”。

    Maybe, though tying comments to Google+ profiles won't necessarily help much. Google+ profiles can still be anonymous, and in any case, the lack of anonymity doesn't necessarily improve comments much: As sites that have required people to comment using their Facebook profiles have learned, lots of people are glad to be mean or disruptive under their real names. The changes, according to YouTube, will also include pushing up comments that more people will care to read. As it rolls out over the next few months, the system will emphasize "posts at the top of the list from the video's creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles." People who manage video channels (some of whom have loudly complained about the problem) will get more tools for moderating comments. That will no doubt help at least a little.

    The question for many sites might come down to: What is the utility of comments? Usually, that utility is marginal at best.

    That's the conclusion Popular Science came to this week, when it decided to do away with comments altogether. Over the protestations of people who -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- still believe that giving everyone with an Internet account "a voice" is somehow an unalloyed good, the magazine declared that, even though the site attracts a good number of thoughtful comments, those are overwhelmed by the trolls. Suzanne LaBarre, the online content director of PopularScience.com, cited research (of course!) finding that Internet comments tend to skew the perceptions of readers, often leading them to conclusions that are precisely the opposite of what an article author has argued based on research and reportage. Science-oriented sites seem to be particularly popular targets for anti-intellectual types, such as climate-change deniers, who often don't have anything to back up their declarations, or who cite faulty or cherry-picked research. In cases like that, some readers come away believing that the comments are just as valid as the article under which they were posted (or even more so if they were inclined in that direction to begin with.)

    LaBarre confronted this problem with refreshing directness: The "politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics," she wrote. "Comments can be bad for science," was her conclusion. Indeed, the random utterances of random people are pretty much the antithesis of the scientific (and the journalistic) enterprise.

    For all the strained efforts to make comments work online, the onus might ultimately be on the rest of us. Getting everybody on board might seem like a gargantuan task, but the more people who decide to just say no to comments, the less valuable they'll be to web publishers. Maybe we should all take the advice of the Don't Read Comments Twitter feed: "Don't do it! Don't give in. There are people who love you. Don't throw your life away by reading internet comments." 

    然而，把评论跟Google+个人资料信息捆绑在一起也许不一定起到多大作用。Google+个人资料信息仍然有可能是匿名的，而且在任何情况下，根除匿名者并不一定能够显著改善评论质量：一些网站要求用户使用Facebook账户名发表评论，但它们发现，许多人非常乐意使用真实姓名发表低劣或破坏性评论。据YouTube透露，变化措施还将包括推升更多人愿意阅读的评论。在接下来的几个月中，这套系统将在评论列表顶部突出“来自视频创建者、名人、针对视频本身的不俗见解，以及Google+朋友圈的跟帖。”视频频道的管理者（一些管理者大声地抱怨评论问题）将拥有更多的评论管理工具。毫无疑问，这样做至少会有些用处。

    许多网站的问题可归结为：何为评论的功用？这种效用充其量只是边缘性的。

    这正是《大众科学》（Popular Science）总结出的结论。本周，这份杂志的官网决定彻底取消评论功能。在一片抗议声中——尽管所有证据皆指向相反方向，许多人依然认为，每一位拥有互联网账户的人都会发出一种纯粹意义上的“好声音”——《大众科学》宣布，尽管该网站吸引了不少深思熟虑的评论，但这些评论总是被“钓鱼贴”淹没。大众科学网在线内容主管苏珊•拉巴尔援引了一项研究成果。这项研究发现，互联网评论会歪曲读者的看法（当然是这样！），往往导致他们得出与文章作者根据研究和报道而陈述的内容完全相反的结论。一些科学类网站似乎成为了反智人士尤其喜欢攻击的目标。比如，否认气候变化的人往往会在这些网站发表一些毫无依据的意见，援引错误的研究，或者挑选一些能够支撑其观点的研究成果。在这种情况下，一些读者会认为，评论与作为评论对象的文章本身具有同等程度的正当性（倘若这些读者一开始就倾向于评论表述的观点，他们甚至会认为评论比文章本身更靠谱）。

    拉巴尔以令人振作的言论直面这个问题：“受政治倾向驱动，针对专业知识的长达数十年的战争已经削弱了各界对于各种各样经科学验证的主题所取得的广泛共识，”她写道。她的结论是“评论对科学有害”。事实上，随机人物的随机见解恰恰处于科学（以及新闻）事业的对立面。

    尽管许多网站为了让在线评论发挥作用已经付出了艰辛的努力，但最终的责任或许应该由我们这些普罗大众来承担。让每个人参与似乎是一个过于庞大的任务，但决定对评论说不的人越多，评论对于网络出版商的价值就越小。或许我们都应该接受一条以“不要读评论”为主题的Twitter消息给出的建议：“不要看评论！不要破罐破摔。你还是有人爱的。不要浪费生命去看什么网络评论。”

    译者：任文科