Irish Times website no longer allowing comments

CrabRevolution

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119893068#Comment_119893068

How can the Village be construed as defending the Church? You can't call Ingle's article callous without explicitly acknowledging the abuse that occurred.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119893090#Comment_119893090

Yes, it was a title awarded by the pope no less. So what?

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119893078#Comment_119893078

Amazing, just jump right in to attacking the poster not the post

No, I don't. FFS 🙄

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119893100#Comment_119893100

Yes of course I've read it and it is indeed vile. There are those now trying to stir up controversy about a nothing article from Ingle and (whether this is their goal, or not) it will deflect attention away from the actual issue and those who covered up and ignored these vile abuses.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119893148#Comment_119893148

Again someone else replying to what was not written.

I never said they were unique to such schools but it's obvious that the fee-paying ones in particular have this sort of culture around them and it's not a healthy one imo.

FrancieBrady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119906581#Comment_119906581

Abuse everywhere had 'omerta'...it's a ridiculous thing to get hung up on here. And doesn't address the sad 'woe is me' gloating in the piece.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119906557#Comment_119906557

i set out right below why i asked and i think given that context your vociferous repeated attempts to make this discussion about anything other than the shitfest the article was is misguided and obvious

so yeah its a fair question to ask and you've answered it squarely, fair play

you're still 100% wrong on it like, and in a small small minority as far as ive seen

Caquas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119749306#Comment_119749306

Nine months have passed since the IT pulled its comments section while promising to allow readers comment on selected articles in future.

An ample gestation period but no sign of the promised offspring. No one here will be surprised because no one believed a word of it.

IT have cut themselves off from spontaneous reactions and they are increasingly out of touch with their readers and Irish people in general (the former being a small and highly unrepresentative cohort of the latter).

hamburgham

Was just thinking about this today. Really miss the comments. The paper is definitely diminished without them.

Used love when the comments were predominantly in disagreement with the thrust of an article, let the writers see how out if touch they were. They can’t really insult their readers the way they insult and patronise others who disagree with them.

There was a piece in the IT a few weeks ago with ‘the Ireland is full brigade’ quoted in the sub heading. Really, really pixxed me off. Would have loved to see the comments on that piece.

Hotblack Desiato

IT have cut themselves off from spontaneous reactions and they are increasingly out of touch with their readers and Irish people in general (the former being a small and highly unrepresentative cohort of the latter).

You don't have to agree with everything printed in a paper you know. I'm a subscriber but certainly don't agree with many of the opinion pieces they print - especially the semi-regular ones from bishops!

There's still the letters page and some articles rightly come in for strong criticism there.

I am surprised though that they haven't brought back the comments yet, it makes a website a lot more "sticky" which is why the likes of the Journal do it. I suppose the IT gets the lion's share of its digital revenue from subscribers rather than advertisers so it's less of an imperative for them to encourage repeated visits of an article to read / make comments.

There were some right oddballs in the IT comments though especially in the early days. (anyone remember "Babs" or her many uber-catholic incarnations?) Less so when it became subscriber only but there was still one guy who posted morning noon and night and must have gone through something like 20 accounts after each was banned in turn for abusive comments.

Brussels Sprout

Used love when the comments were predominantly in disagreement with the thrust of an article

That was pretty much the comments section under every article. I think it's because the people most motivated to set up accounts to comment were the ones who were the angriest. I remember even the "Ask Roe" advice columns had comments that were all just people accusing the paper of making up the questions.

Separate to that I noticed that any article about Mick Wallace and Clare Daly or Russia was infested people people praising them and criticising the West. That's not a majority opinion in this country but it always was on those comments sections.

elperello

I have been reading the IT for a long time.

I also have an online account.

I have no interest in reading a lot of comments about articles I can make my own mind up about.

If I ever find that I agree with everything in the paper I will reconsider my support of it.

Strumms

i think in Ireland, life has never been more controversial. Through covid, the influx of 75,000 Ukrainians who we are housing financing and supporting, November figures showed that Overall, a total of 887,500 people were on some form of hospital waiting list at the end of November, including almost 97,000 children.

When the additional 243,000 people awaiting CTs, MRIs or ultrasounds nationally are added, the total number awaiting hospital care is over 1.1 million,or more than one-fifth of the entire population.

Yet, our media overlords don’t want us engaging with their journalists, their articles or probably even each other…neither do our politicians im sure… funny old ‘ democracy ‘ this has turned into.

elperello

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120285312#Comment_120285312

You can thank Mr Putin for the plight of our Ukrainian visitors.

I agree with you that we definitely have big problems in the health service.

The IT is owned by a trust so no overlords there.

Our democracy is in rude health.

https://www.sgi-network.org/2022/Ireland/Quality_of_Democracy

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120285362#Comment_120285362

The SGI report isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It’s organized by a pro EU and pro globalist company called Bertelsmann. The worlds largest media conglomerate and a facilitator / cheerleader of globalism and this schtick we are falling victim to.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120285441#Comment_120285441

Farage-esque "analysis" there.

elperello

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120285441#Comment_120285441

Please yourself I'm not going rooting for something you will approve of.

Maybe to save time you should link to a report that shows our democracy is in trouble.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120285312#Comment_120285312

You seem to be conflating a hamfisted running of a health service with the concept of democracy and access to voting. Ranting about Overlords and Globalists doesn't really keep the debate in the realms of reality.

Plus regrading the IT, it predates the internet by decades: why the sudden decision that being unable to comment on an internet article is the death of democracy? Was our democracy dying in the 60s? 70s? 80s? When the IT published without this direct feedback mechanism?

The letters to the editor hasn't gone away, but if you're metric for democracy depends on anonymous comments underneath a web article, then we truly live in a boring, stable democracy.

Seth Brundle

Mod: keep the language clean. One post deleted

elperello

This is an example of the strength of the Letters Page.

Ten individuals writing under their own name comprehensively answering a letter from a group of politicians published the day before.

If it was an open comments section you would have to wade through a couple of hundred posts to get a few such succinct comments.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2023/02/25/appeasing-russian-aggression-will-not-bring-peace/

This is the letter they were replying to.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2023/02/24/russias-war-on-ukraine/

cheese sandwich

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120289045#Comment_120289045

It’s not an either/or situation though, is it?

I agree that it was good to see those letters in response to the rather mealy-mouthed contribution from the politicians. However I doubt the IT would be willing to publish that much criticism of one of their own articles.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120285312#Comment_120285312

I think the spamming of comments and forums with extreme views and paranoid agendas makes them impossible to police, and it's that what has made many sites withdraw them.

That it also removed a lot of opposing viewpoints is more of happy coincidence. The price is balance and credibility. The sites have decided this is unavoidable trade off.

You can see on this thread where is been derailed with tirades unrelated to the subject.

yagan

I think the upshot of the last decade is that people who publish on social media must be held as accountable as traditional media when it comes to spreading misinformation that is socially divisive.

A bunch of ghouls can brigade a comments section with subtle comments but that doesn't mean the article is unsound, even if the writer has a grating persona.

However all that aside I do think the IT has probably transitioned badly to this new plain. They've thrown up way too much garbage content that can't be filtered by subscribers. Usually when in the old print days I'd immediately consign the property porn/lifestyle sections to the bin, sometimes just leaving them in the shop if out walking. Now all drivel appears on the main subscriber feed with no way to filter.

They might have kept me as a subscriber if I'd the option to filter out the fill.

I did get a phone call when I cancelled my sub, but they never asked why.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120285248#Comment_120285248

Why does a comment section need to reflect 'majority opinion'? The IT itself is like a brick wall of official attitudes, so its nice to see varying opinions as well - left or right.

The same people who would like to see these commenters banned from IT would throw a strop if they turned up on boards instead.

Or should anyone with a dissenting opinion just sit in their room and write it in their diary? Or better yet just think bad thoughts but never utter them!

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120289045#Comment_120289045

A tour-de-force of total confidence that a compromise peace deal would mainly help Russia. Though they may be right I would love to know how can they be so completely certain.

Printing ten in a row just signals to readers that this is the dominant opinion in society that they're meant to hold themselves.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120289839#Comment_120289839

"Official attitudes"? Come on, dial back that kinda talk. Why does a private paper have to reflect any editorial slant except its own? Every single paper now has an angle, and some, especially the tabloids, don't even try to hide that. Going double for polemical UK papers like the Mail or Telegraph. You'll be doing well to find any newspaper in the last 100 years that has a deeply objective view - if that's what you want then... I dunno. Stick with Reuters or something that sticks to the facts? And even that gets sticky depending on the subject. That's the nature of politics.

And as mentioned, Letters to the Editor still exists, still contains contrarian thoughts and opinions. But just because it isn't 100 barely legible comments about CoVid being a hoax, doesn't mean some rigorous intellectual dissent is being lost.

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120289839#Comment_120289839

Our world has changed, traditional media were gate keepers, now we're all publishers, including me when I hit the "post comment" button.

However I do expect a paid news service to stick to basic reportable facts as much as possible. Instead the IT and many legacy outlets feel they must compete with the online swirl of opinions with multiple offerings that would never have been proffered when ink and paper was a primary consideration.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120289839#Comment_120289839

The problem is comment sections are usually flooded with predominantly extreme opinions. Which is often being fueled, (created even) by having a anonymous platform in the first place.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120289870#Comment_120289870

The long-term problem is that, as you see especially since around 2010 or so, people get so used to there being "one opinion" on an issue that they feel any independent thought is an irritant and that anyone expressing a different view is a nuisance.

See where @Brussels Sprout said that Daly-style lefists (I'm not a leftist myself) are "infesting" IT comment section. Extreme rhetoric and very nasty. But I have to 'dial back' my talk that the IT reflects officialdom? (Which it obviously does)

There's no way that anyone would spontaneously become a Black and Ukrainian nationalist, who otherwise dislikes white men, and supports feminism but then is also anti-feminist when its comes to trans right *without* top-down direction. Because that is an incoherent mishmash of opinions which you could not hold unless to learned to hold them. You are taking direction from a streamlined consensus.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120289863#Comment_120289863

Russia's past behavior I assume.

If it's 99% of what they receive. Would they be more correct in printing 50% of either side of an argument.