F1 Fanatic

A lot of this is spot on!

http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2011/09/news-websites-comments-golden-rule.php

I fully agree with this author but I also think that the master of the house is usually responsible for the atmosphere in his party. I mean, the quality of the virtual discussion much depends on the guys who run the particular website or forum. First, they should observe all these rules themselves. If you post offensive or rude articles then don’t expect polite comments at them. Secondly, moderators must define certain rules and monitor the comments all the time. The same rules must be applied for everyone. You cannot have a complete anarchy on one day and a totalitarian state on the next day.

I have had both good and bad experience in commenting on the web and sometimes I’ve been struggling to keep my emotions under control but that’s always been partly because one or both of the above mentioned rules were not obeyed by the website owners.

I believe that F1F has been able to maintain the high discussion standards mainly because its ‘master’ reads all the comments himself, has set clear red lines and treats all the commentators fairly and equally.

Nice article.

One thing about the comments on this particular site that is currently annoying occurs whenever Lewis Hamilton features in the article (usually because of an accident). During the fallout from the incidents he was involved in over the Belgian GP weekend, I was simultaneously accused of being a biased fan of Lewis Hamilton, or someone who hates him intensely. Obviously, they both can’t be true.

I think that replies which attack people who make comments because they believe the person is clearly biased should have their comments deleted. It lowers the tone of the discussion considerably, and prevents people from expressing their true opinion for fear of attracting the wrath of the truly biased who have the opposite view.

I don’t suppose the moderators will publish this but… my uncle always said this to me about life in general when I was growing up. “Don’t be a dick”

He was damn right.

Dick. ;-)

LOL George, good idea.

I wouldn’t put it like this (being a Dick – what about female posters?), but the concept is sound. If you think about how you would react to reading a commment, it normally means changing texts to make more sense, or just refrain from posting.

http://xkcd.com/386/ (I think I actually picked this one up on F1F in some comment) is reminiscent of not being able to shrug your shoulders at something unmeaningful like an internet comment.

Yeah that xkcd one was aimed at me. I still stand by it, PM was wrong :p

I also think that the master of the house is usually responsible for the atmosphere in his party.

I’d say that’s only true up to a point online.

There are so many sites where users’ comments are completely ignored, which leads a lot of them to becoming hysterical, that a lot of people assume that’s the case everywhere.

Obviously that’s not the case on F1 Fanatic – I read as many comments as I can, we have Comment of the Day and loads of other user-driven stuff. There is, I think, a fantastic community of users on here and I do what I can to promote it.

But if someone who’s only ever been on, say, YouTube, comes on here and discovers there comments actually get read and, if they’re offensive or insulting or whatever, get deleted, that’s a bit of a shock for them.