On small blogs such as this, comments generally remain related to the blog post. A humorous video by Barely Political strengthened my view, though, that on social networking sites like YouTube, they often end up being completed unrelated to the topic of the video.
I hate YouTube comments. Find me one decent one. They are generally a series of curse words in an incoherent sentence, resembling ‘you suck’. If not that, they’ll just be about the number of views (‘how does a laughing baby get 79 mill views?’). On a blog, people would not go to the hassle of writing comments which have no meaning.
Otherwise, comments erupt into an irrelevant political debate, as they often did in the run-up to the 2008 American presidential elections. If not that, they will become racist. I admit on occasion I respond to ones I strongly disagree with, but only if my political views are antithetical to someone elses and only if the video is about the issue.
It’s too easy to write a meaningless sentence and then to submit it. The result is people post things without thinking their argument through or even proof-reading what they’ve written. If voting held a more important role on the site, completely useless and idiotic comments would never be have to be seen again. There’s another explanation, which is quite cynical but quite likely to be true: I suspect that many people leave pointless YouTube comments in a pathetic attempt to drive people to their profiles.
I am a big fan of Wikipedia and for some reason, I chuckle everytime I read the media report about it. The old media appear to often have a negative bias towards the Internet, seeing it as a threat and a corrupter of morals. However, coverage of Wikipedia is always particularly negative.
Amazingly, The Observer deemed it newsworthy to report that Wikipedia had been edited to show Robert Kilroy-Silk (a controversial British MEP) was a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Whilst libel is definitely an issue and is wrong, most instances of blatant vandalism like this are fixed in minutes, if not seconds! That, though, doesn’t make a captivating headline or read!
Reporting on Wikipedia’s inaccuracies, libel and vandalism is old news. By now, the public should have realised that ‘WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY’ (to quote their disclaimer). It’s perfectly easy for any journalist to find lies or vandalism on Wikipedia articles through purely clicking on the ‘history’ link on the article and seeing which edits have been reverted.
I found everything from local newspapers to major national news stories criticising Wikipedia (or information within it).
I hope the media begin to move away from blaming Wikipedia and begin to blame the editors who make the misleading edits. People, children and adults, still find it amusing to vandalise articles and it seems to even be considered acceptable amongst the populace.
