Analysis: comment abuse : Melbourne Indymedia

Example:
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/06/146114.php

This is a fantastic original story. Someone has posted their thoughts on whats going down at the G8 in Germany.

The first comment, however, is where shit starts to get fucked up. Some moron has copied a story from somewhere and posted it.

The only relationship in content between the story and the first comment is that they are both about the G8. It's quite sad to see this. The comment is actually longer than the original story, and is unoriginal content.

Why is it that some people fail to understand the the comment functionality on a story is to discuss the story, and closely related topics. I would have thought that a good discussion around protest tactics might have come from this story (and still might).

It's just such a bloody shame to see thoughtless cross-posting everywhere. I don't want to have to sift through tonnes of mindless cross posts to get to peoples comments. I would go so far as to say that this activity is akin to spamming.

If you want to post a story, post it as a story, at very least, don't fuck up the comment threads.

Yes i realise both the story and the comment in this case are about the G8. Yes i still consider the comment to be off topic and annoying. Annoying as hell. It really has very little to do with the points the author of the original story was making.

I also acknowledge that the comment poster actually put a decent original comment at the bottom of his comment, after the lengthy crosspost. I'm wondering why this person didn't just post their original comment, and perhaps a link to the bill gates story after. it would have been much more readable. Why shove that sort of thing at people? Just get to the discussion. Stop cluttering up the place with junk.