Comments? We don't need no stinking comment! Digg vs Slashdot

Slashdot comments are unreadable to me. I rarely read any comments on Digg, althought sometime there are good commens on digg with the follow up of the story.

Maybe later on there will be a comment comparison between Digg Slashdot and Newsvine?

Lame! No digg!

:-)

Is there any point to adding a comment here? hmmmmm...

Actually, I think you'll find that Slashdot's commenting community are up to par if you set your threshold high enough (and ignore anything modded 'funny' if you don't want to see all those folks who are just trying to be comedians). More often than not, you'll get commentors who are professionals in the area that is relevant to the article/post who have something to offer (perhaps a different angle or viewpoint that the story did not cover).

While digg does have an active community, they don't seem to have an intelligent one (insofar as the commenting community seems to go).

I think digg got it right in that all submissions are open, but the community it produces feels very much like an ADD culture - click and read, click and read, click and read, without really giving much thought about the content of the article that was linked.

I feel that Newsvine's community outshines both sites at the moment, although things may change when the site opens up. Does Newsvine plan on adding reporting features to the comments? Or perhaps a voting system (same as regular stories) for comments.

It's interesting to see Newsvine add a chat feature to every article, although I feel that because of the range of news posted here that it's unlikely to ever get a good community following on a single story.

I find the comments on Slashdot are usually too much work to click through and find anything that matter. Digg does tend to be a flame war but you can tell immediately and move on to the next comment. I find that I can usually find more information about a story in the comments. Which can be helpful because on Digg sometimes the links don't always give the full story.

I actually enjoy the comments on digg. If I find a story interesting enough to follow the title then I am probably interested also in knowing what other people think about it, know about it, think are wrong with it... and every now and then I am able to add a comment that is useful to other readers in some way. Or I can just be a smartass. =)

I agree with your final point. Digg comments first of all are flat format, preventing any meaningful discussion and leading to massive repetitiveness. Slashdot comments are the only reason I read the site. Perhaps your threshold is set too low, but there are very well informed and intelligent people on Slashdot most of the time, many times providing links to original sources the story submitter didn't take the time to research and providing opinion and factual information you would not have been exposed to without reading the comments. Granted, there are "trolls" and "flamewars" on certain topics, but those are easily avoided by the extensive control you have over what you wish to see in the comments section (which you've acknowledged).

I have to say that comments are the reason I use those websites. I usually only read the +5 comments on slashdot because they're generally the funniest/most insightful/most interesting comments that really do add to the story. On digg I usually glance at the comments, but since they are not in a threaded manner, it doesn't promote much discussion.

I am really enjoying newsvine's comments though. The layout of the website really encourages you to read them (as opposed to digg).