The Jalopnik flame thread

Jalopnik is garbage. I've seen many "news" reports there that contain blatantly false information that anyone with any connections in the car business immediately know is B.S.

As Rob said, they are the Enquirer or TMZ as TheMayor compared. Garbage either way, except I occasionally check out TMZ... (insert slightly embarrassing emoticon here)

Stay Well-

SBF

 

Fixed

 

I must have had 20 people emailing me thinking that may be my car. I was at cars and coffee Richmond and the driver was at C&C Nva.

I hope / pray it is as one witness said that he was ok and seen next to the car post accident.

495 and Nva traffic in general is awful.

 

Yeah its pretty well known that the whole gawker media family is sleazy. They are the ones that bought the stolen iPhone 4 prototype and got raided by the police for having stolen property.

 

All I have to say is that making anonymous, rude comments on the internet is the 21st century version of writing insults on the walls of the bathroom stall.

You only have two options: You can come in and repaint the walls every week, or just ignore them.

Jalopnik, like nearly every major site, is choosing the latter.

 

No mention....shocked, I tell you, I am shocked.
http://jalopnik.com/5945517/this-ferrari-458-was-obliterated-after-a-crash-in-virginia

 

You get an attaboy. Four more and we will all salute!

 

that's one perspective, but more accurately would be to say that since it is "your" webpage, then it is incumbant upon you to moderate it's content regardless
just because you have cheap and immature responses made visible on there for cheap laughs, it should be apparent that it only goes to makes your page cheap in the process
it's those type comments publisized, and iffy 'reporting' that i don't even look at it, nor to links to it at all anymore ...so if that was the goal, mark accomplished!

Bob, i'd say fire back in the comments section there, but then you'd find yourself arguing with 13 year olds, and there would be no resolution to that end

 

Moderating user content is expensive. It requires staff and time. So, just like most major sites, Jalopnik can't do that because they almost surely can't afford that. That leaves them with only one other option: Don't let users make comments. They're not going to do that either because that will make their site less appealing to the users. My entire point with my comments in this thread has not been to defend Jalopnik. I really don't care about Jalopnik; in fact this article in question is probably only the 3rd or 4th article I've ever read on the site. Rather, my point was explain that this "user comment" issue is not a problem with Jalopnik, it's a problem with the entire internet (and anonymity).

Take this example from YouTube. It's some comments from the video "Tommy Hilfiger driving his Ferrari Enzo":

User #1: "If you have a small wiener, buy a Ferrari....."

User #2: "You don't make sense you stereotypical bastard. If you believe in stereotypes. Then how about this, Lil Wayne owns and drives a Ferrari. He is black. So in that case he has a big d*ck cause he is black. But he owns and drives a Ferrari."

User #1: "You must be retarded. Maybe a wetb*ck that doesn't understand english to well. So here goes- If me, you, or anyone out there has a small wiener, buy a Ferrari to get attention. No comprende?"

Second example from the same video comments:

User #3: "Another guy who in reality is only loaded because if stupid idiots who have more money than brains, doesn't really deserve it lol"

Here is a link to the video if anyone is interested to read some of the comments themselves. There are many more of the same type: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI5BbEW0__I&feature=related

So my point is... If YouTube (one of the biggest, most popular sites in the world) has this exact same problem and can't fix it, should Jalopnik be expected to?

 

I agree with that.

 

It isn't always greatly expensive. Jalopnik could approach their commenting members and ask for volunteers who care about the site to moderate the content in their spare time. I admit it's not a perfect solution but, if you can pick the right sort of well-intentioned volunteers, it can work reasonably well.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

i took from your early replies to be involved with them

there isn't a comparison between youtube and jalopnik's web page, two different things entirely

jalopnik could choose to be more respectful in it's clamor for attention, and it most certainly can moderate those comments in a responsible manner, and not at undue expense either ...innapropriate remarks are easily removed, or as mentioned, to turn off comments allowed for article with that type of content

 

Sure, I agree that creating user-moderators (that are volunteers) could be an option.

I suspect, however, that Jalopnik doesn't care enough to do that because they don't see user comments as being that important really (in a positive OR negative way). I think most sites that employ user comments do it as sort of an afterthought just to keep users a little more engaged than they would be otherwise. But the real focus is on the professionally generated content (from the staff) and of course the ads that they run next to it.

As I said before though, I certainly agree that the comments could/should be disabled if the article involves something as serious as a crash and the comments are offensive.

 

Yeah I guess I should reiterate just to avoid confusion: I'm not affiliated with Jalopnik. Thanks for pointing that out

I disagree that there is no comparison between YouTube and Jalopnik though. Why do you say that? They are both major sites that allow anonymous commenting by users. My point was that almost any site that allows that will have this problem. I just happened to use YouTube as an example. Also, the comments I quoted from YouTube were almost exactly like the comments you see on Jalopnik.

I do agree that they could turn off comments for articles involving things like crashes though. However moderating comments would probably be too time consuming. I think it is an "on or off" situation. Another poster said they could create moderators out of users though, which is an option.

But in any case... the entire point of my first post in this thread (and pretty much all the others) was very simple: The staff of a website are different than the commenters and my personal opinion is that a site should not be judged based on random anonymous commenters. That's all I'm trying say.

 

yes, that's much clearer

the two are completely different in formats, one a minor site for posted articles, the other an upload site for videos, but both share the comments enabled

the jalopnik are certainly not responsible for what people might comment, but they do have the ability to temper those comments, especially where inappropriate ...as i said before, those visible comments reflect back on the integrity of the webpage and it's editors

 

Yes I think we're reaching common ground here

I think that a site like Jalopnik could temporarily suspend commenting for an article that involves a tragedy or something similar. I think that would be appropriate. However, I still must disagree that the YouTube and Jalopnik comparison was off base. What I'm trying to say is that offense comments are an unfortunate side effect of anonymity, no matter what site they're on.

 

At least the comments were fair.

Maybe I'll start a site wrecked POS... cars that were wrecked/ bent all out of shape that didn't make it into Jalopnik. You know.. the camo truck that has a rear qp that is so dented it's unrecognizable, the camaro or ricer that has a disfigured bumper and a light held onto place with scotch tape. etc. etc.

The problem is any Ferrari owners that comment, no matter how fairly, still look like even bigger ******bags in the court of public opinion. You can't stop the jealousy that drives mean spirited posting. Censorship isn't the financial or practical solution.

 

It's the internet. The simple formula is regular guy + anonymity + outlet = raging ******.

Blaming the website for the comments of its users is like blaming the US government for the anti-Mohammad video.

 

Ask other automotive journalists about Jalopnik and they will tell you they've become the TMZ of the car world. Back in the day they were a good site to visit but I rarely go there anymore. First the buggy Gawker redesign, forcing users to a new login system, and a new crappy commenting format, the whole "nibbles" thing they never fixed so you couldn't add photos. It was enough for me to stop visiting.

By the way this thread will probably be a featured article on their site within the coming week.

 

Rob, the owner of this website, doesn't seem to have a problem with him. If he did, he could complain when they use links from this website about Ferrari news.

Beyond that, I agree that many things posted on their website are in bad taste. That's the nature of most of the internet. You believe that they are complicit because they don't censor their users enough. Okay. Most of their users are driven to the website from other sites within the Gawker media empire, which is known for being snarky and sarcastic. They are catering to their user base, which obviously differs in age and preference to the users here.

Auto Blog is a much better website.