Okay Geek Farm
Engadget Disables Comments
Ricardo Trejo
Too many Apple stories - apparently, that was the reason for the backlash from comments made against the Engadget team. To quell the dispute, Topolsky himself then posted up a humorous Apple-Free Engadget, stripping the site of anything related to the Cupertino company. Meant to be a joke, Engadget soon saw more outrage, which then culminated into the decision to disable comments altogether on the site indefinitely.
Now this is what I don't get; Why punish the entire community over a couple of yahoos? I mean if you have a rowdy bunch of kids talking through a movie, yes, you kick'em out, but you don't stop the movie and tell everyone to leave do you? Comments are an open forum, so why not just do some old fashioned banning, Kotaku-style? But then again if you ban users for "talking back" and questioning things you run the risk of sounding arrogant and totalitarian - not allowing any criticism come near you, which removes any credibility you once had in my opinion.
To me comments are an immediate line between the author, the content, and a culmination of all the readers - A forum is born and gives rise to discussion and opinion - Without that you become old fashioned, almost newpaper like; a one way street where content goes out but nothing comes in, which can be damning because you no longer are writing for the reader but are now focusing on yourself.
Though, in this specific case we have Engadget writing up what the people want, because despite what the vocal readership may think, the average person eats this stuff up. I mean, did anyone look up the hashtag #apple during the iPad presentation last Wednesday? 1,000 tweets every couple seconds. Regardless if you love or hate Apple, the attention of hundreds of thousands were all fixed on the coverage being provided for the event. So in reality Engadget was giving the masses what they wanted, but in turn sorta appeared as if they had "sold out", but that's not really a new concept in media.
To be honest, there really is no problem here. People get butthurt on the internet for just about any reason nowadays since they have a voice, but that doesn't mean you have to silence them because you don't appreciate what they're saying. This issue could've gone back and forth for a while with some interesting results, but instead of letting it all play out Engadget flipped over the Checker board, so to speak, and ended the game prematurely, which to me was an unwise move in my opinion, but heck, what do I know? I still say bring back the comments and let it go.
If people want to talk smack then let them, but if you think they're hurting the community then ban them, however make sure you don't ban opinion - which is exactly what Engadget did.
