Maybe just turn on paid subscribers only on your posts about “the current thing.” I imagine those are the ones drawing in different readership and strong opinions. You might lose a few good comments, but it would probably be worth it overall.
Here's another suggestion: price discrimination and supply & demand. Identify the non-subscribers whose comments you value for whatever reason and offer them a discounted price (for a while); then limit comments to full or discounted subscribers. From time to time, if the comments become too much of a closed bubble or limited in other ways, re-open comments to nonsubscribers to identify new recruits worthy of discounts. Akin to a "farm system" to keep the major league team well stocked.
Some subscribers might try to game the system but, given Scott Gibb's reply (i.e., even a full subscription is not that expensive), I doubt it's worth many people's time to play games.
This might be a useful application of ChatGPT. I don't know what your feed of comments looks like. You may be able to develop a reader of the feed. The feed what is read to the AI. Of course you'd have to train the AI to recognize what you consider a valid (valuable?) comment. The AI could do most of the work. The mistakes it makes would diminish over time. Other authors on substack may also value this service highly and would provide a source of income to compensate the developer of such a system. The AI could also write to commenters that it rejects with the reasons for the objection and helpful hints on how to make better comments. Of course you may learn something about the comments as well because some emotional responses to the comments would be absent and a clear objection voiced by the AI.
Depending on how you see your comment feed, the expense of constructing and training the AI would vary.
Shouldn't Substack provide this as a functionality?
They already have all the data needed to train the neural network (assuming the writer has been writing for a long time), and they already know what comments the writer has moderated (deleted?). The cost of training the network might not be insignificant but after training the cost of:
- Option 1: showing the writer what comments need his/her attention, flagging them so the writer can take action.
- Option 2: automatically delete comments flagged by the neural network.
should be insignificant.
A one time payment might be enough to make this attractive for both the writer and Substack.
I agree with most of what you say. The assumption that Substack collects moderated comments may be problematical. If it doesn't, then the cost of starting to collect that data for all authors may prohibit a look at the feasibility of an AI moderator. An individual author has an advantage here and could conceivably construct a small scale system patent it and approach Substack to purchase the system. Or the author could approach other authors that have high moderation costs about subscribing to a add on service.
Perhaps substack is already developing such a system, maybe our little thread here will encourage them to do so.
I don't know if Substack can do this (and if it currently cannot, perhaps it could be induced to add the capacity), but maybe paid subscribers get unlimited commenting and free ones get X comments per week, where X is high enough to get a variety of views but low enough to reduce volume?
Can comment moderation be delegated to select, paid, subscribers? Really payment is a non-issue - more like delegated to high-trust individuals who would take the responsibility seriously.
You might, in all seriousness, try asking Scott Alexander what he would do in your situation-- possibly even in an ACX open thread comment! Scott has more experience successfully moderating a high-traffic, unpaid, ideologically diverse commenter population than probably anyone else in the world.
"the comment section has become very heavily used and difficult to moderate. "
When I look at Freddie's 200-300+ or even Glenn Loury's frequent 50+, "In My Tribe" comments are NOT heavily used UNLESS you are willing to moderate strongly, alone.
Just have some guidelines. Maybe a post - plus always in the "About" page.
On the individual to & fro comment threads between two commenters, don't even read them - unless one of the two complain / report.
Funny how few of your zoom meeters comment much here - I'd be interested in where they do comment, if elsewhere.
I still follow lots of the FI folk. With disappointment that so many did not support Trump, and virtually none, including Kling, have been willing to write that the USA, and the world, would have likely been better off if Trump had won (/the deep state censorship rigging & email ballots hadn't stolen the election).
It might help to use a non-substack system to comment in. Some of them have better features for
moderation. One of the features that helps with the problem is to have more than one moderator so the workload is spread among several users. I don't know if substack has a way to do this. I don't have a preferred system to use for this, but can say 'stay away from Wordpress, which is really hard to use'.
Arnold was using twitter to promote this substack, you using this for inspiration/ focus - fantasy intellectual lite seems like one of the things desired. Summary/ teaser here, link to there for more details and fewer “expand” comments.
Maybe there’s a price they would though might take experimentation… at least it seems like the Fifth Column guys are paid only, cost more, and still get dissenters (though they’re probably a larger audience with a lot of media types of various persuasions)
Alternatively, paid only here and have a side Reddit?
Definitely seems like a problem for sub stack to solve but I think the suggestion to select which threads are paid only is probably the quickest 80/20 answer.
Maybe just turn on paid subscribers only on your posts about “the current thing.” I imagine those are the ones drawing in different readership and strong opinions. You might lose a few good comments, but it would probably be worth it overall.
Here's another suggestion: price discrimination and supply & demand. Identify the non-subscribers whose comments you value for whatever reason and offer them a discounted price (for a while); then limit comments to full or discounted subscribers. From time to time, if the comments become too much of a closed bubble or limited in other ways, re-open comments to nonsubscribers to identify new recruits worthy of discounts. Akin to a "farm system" to keep the major league team well stocked.
Some subscribers might try to game the system but, given Scott Gibb's reply (i.e., even a full subscription is not that expensive), I doubt it's worth many people's time to play games.
This might be a useful application of ChatGPT. I don't know what your feed of comments looks like. You may be able to develop a reader of the feed. The feed what is read to the AI. Of course you'd have to train the AI to recognize what you consider a valid (valuable?) comment. The AI could do most of the work. The mistakes it makes would diminish over time. Other authors on substack may also value this service highly and would provide a source of income to compensate the developer of such a system. The AI could also write to commenters that it rejects with the reasons for the objection and helpful hints on how to make better comments. Of course you may learn something about the comments as well because some emotional responses to the comments would be absent and a clear objection voiced by the AI.
Depending on how you see your comment feed, the expense of constructing and training the AI would vary.
Shouldn't Substack provide this as a functionality?
They already have all the data needed to train the neural network (assuming the writer has been writing for a long time), and they already know what comments the writer has moderated (deleted?). The cost of training the network might not be insignificant but after training the cost of:
- Option 1: showing the writer what comments need his/her attention, flagging them so the writer can take action.
- Option 2: automatically delete comments flagged by the neural network.
should be insignificant.
A one time payment might be enough to make this attractive for both the writer and Substack.
I agree with most of what you say. The assumption that Substack collects moderated comments may be problematical. If it doesn't, then the cost of starting to collect that data for all authors may prohibit a look at the feasibility of an AI moderator. An individual author has an advantage here and could conceivably construct a small scale system patent it and approach Substack to purchase the system. Or the author could approach other authors that have high moderation costs about subscribing to a add on service.
Perhaps substack is already developing such a system, maybe our little thread here will encourage them to do so.
You are right. Maybe we will see something being developed soon.
I don't know if Substack can do this (and if it currently cannot, perhaps it could be induced to add the capacity), but maybe paid subscribers get unlimited commenting and free ones get X comments per week, where X is high enough to get a variety of views but low enough to reduce volume?
Can comment moderation be delegated to select, paid, subscribers? Really payment is a non-issue - more like delegated to high-trust individuals who would take the responsibility seriously.
Or a free subscription for someone who can moderate?
You might, in all seriousness, try asking Scott Alexander what he would do in your situation-- possibly even in an ACX open thread comment! Scott has more experience successfully moderating a high-traffic, unpaid, ideologically diverse commenter population than probably anyone else in the world.
"the comment section has become very heavily used and difficult to moderate. "
When I look at Freddie's 200-300+ or even Glenn Loury's frequent 50+, "In My Tribe" comments are NOT heavily used UNLESS you are willing to moderate strongly, alone.
Just have some guidelines. Maybe a post - plus always in the "About" page.
On the individual to & fro comment threads between two commenters, don't even read them - unless one of the two complain / report.
Funny how few of your zoom meeters comment much here - I'd be interested in where they do comment, if elsewhere.
I still follow lots of the FI folk. With disappointment that so many did not support Trump, and virtually none, including Kling, have been willing to write that the USA, and the world, would have likely been better off if Trump had won (/the deep state censorship rigging & email ballots hadn't stolen the election).
I'd try delegating. Presumably you've thought of this and, presumably, you'd delegate to someone you know. Delegate and supervise.
It might help to use a non-substack system to comment in. Some of them have better features for
moderation. One of the features that helps with the problem is to have more than one moderator so the workload is spread among several users. I don't know if substack has a way to do this. I don't have a preferred system to use for this, but can say 'stay away from Wordpress, which is really hard to use'.
I have not been bothered by your comments. Feel free to leave comments linking to your own substack writings
Arnold was using twitter to promote this substack, you using this for inspiration/ focus - fantasy intellectual lite seems like one of the things desired. Summary/ teaser here, link to there for more details and fewer “expand” comments.
Maybe I should try it, and others.
But dissenters won't want to pay a small fee to comment, and I don't want to stifle dissent.
Maybe there’s a price they would though might take experimentation… at least it seems like the Fifth Column guys are paid only, cost more, and still get dissenters (though they’re probably a larger audience with a lot of media types of various persuasions)
Alternatively, paid only here and have a side Reddit?
Definitely seems like a problem for sub stack to solve but I think the suggestion to select which threads are paid only is probably the quickest 80/20 answer.