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This is so cool. It's like, 'would you want your mother to read this??' Really great idea, well done!

Thank you!! This would make my life a lot less anxiety-inducing. Keep it up, and don't let anyone get in your way!

This is such an urgent design problem; kudos to you for taking it on. Very impressive!

Is this something I'll be able to install on my site? When will you be releasing it?

haha you guys are a bunch of losers.

ur a sh*tty comment.

hahahahahahahahhha suck it.

FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

The ranchers seem motivated by mostly by greed; no one should have the right to allow their animals destroy public land.

It was a great show. Not a combo I'd of expected to be good together but it was.

Wow, that sounds great.

This is a great story. Man. I wonder if the person who yelled "shut the fuck up!" at him ever heard it.

This seems like a step in the right direction.

It's ridiculous that these guys are being called "protesters". Being armed is a threat of violence, which makes them terrorists.

This story gets more ridiculous by the hour! And, I love that people are sending these guys dildos in the mail now. But… if they really think there's a happy ending in this for any of them, I think they're even more deluded than all of the jokes about them assume.

I agree; I don't want to grant them the legitimacy of protestors. They're greedy, small-minded people who somehow seem to share the mass delusion that this is not only a good idea for themselves as individuals, but is the right thing to do for ranchers at large. Basically: take something that currently belongs to everyone, and give it to a select group of people, so they can profit.

Interesting. I'll be curious to see how this works out. I often refrain from commenting because I don't have the time or desire to engage with the couple of resident trolls who seem to jump on every active WW comment thread.

Awesome! I love Civil Comments!

I'm glad you're working on this, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out. The comments sections of online news stories have the potential to be great tools for community interaction about current events, a Neo Town Hall, of sorts. One of the reasons I rely on Reddit as a platform for news and local discussions is that there's a sense of community interaction that's often lacking in my "real life," hectic discussions. But hopefully we won't be tempted to silence those who take unpopular stances.

Angry trolls, misogynists and Racists", oh my. It doesn't take all of my 150 IQ to see the slant here. it's the "Diversity diode" at work yet again. "We can say anything that we want because we are Diversity. You on the other hand must only say what we allow you to say. From now on, winning arguments against any member of diversity will be considered offensive language. facts, cogent, linear posts and Math are now verboten.

Nice to some attempts to try to make comments better—it feels like any innovation in commenting communities ended with the launch of Disqus nearly a decade ago.

One would hope that the purpose of introducing this system is to encourage more debate and discussion, not less. It seems there are several things that limit the flow of discussion: Making comments that are personal attacks or encouraging witch hunts; true spam (which has been a real problem on WW's comment section, in my experience); and chasing rabbits to draw discussions away from the primary subject at hand. I, for one, don't want to see unpopular opinions silenced. Healthy debate is an important component of a civil society. But when discussions degenerate into insults and distraction, it actually limits the ability of people to talk with each other. I'm believing that this is the intention of your newspaper here, and I hope it's a movement that results in more, not less, commentary on current events. We need it.

Comments will be randomly chosen and be reviewed by more than one person. But I bet the Civil people have an even better, more thorough answer to this question!

She would be a major improvement for city council and she has a long history of giving all citizens a voice. She is a problem solver that is what Portland needs .

I agree! Comments have so much potential to be places for active discussion, especially in publications that already serve an amazing community (but then, I'm biased—I'm a Civil co-founder). We've worked hard to make sure that the comments section won't become an echo chamber, though, by combining clever algorithms on the backend with the peer reviews. That's also why there are two separate questions: "is this a *good* comment?" and "is this comment civil?"

Great question! It's one we're asked a lot. We've designed the system assuming that people *will* try to abuse it. So, in addition to the peer reviews, there are algorithms on the backend doing a lot of meta-analysis. I'm sure the system isn't 100% perfect yet, but we know from months of beta testing that it's a really solid start, and we'll keep working to improve it!

Thanks, Christa! Will you be adding any features to allow overall "upvotes" of the article itself? Also, notification settings for users?

Our aim is actually the opposite: we want spirited debate in which everyone feels free to participate, without fear of harassment, abuse, or death threats. Right now, a lot of voices are being silenced due to that fear. We designed Civil Comments for civil, respectful discussion and debate—we don't want it to become a "positive comments only" echo chamber. There's a lot going on on the backend to prevent abuse of the system. So, everyone is free to speak their mind, even if their opinion is unpopular—so long as they treat each other with respect.

Thanks! We're really going to try — not only to improve civility, but also to make comments more dynamic and interesting.

I applaud Civil's efforts to create some new technology in this field. Hoping for more thoughtful discussions moving forward.

Why bother writing a review if it's going to be this devoid of content? I understand that you work for WW. (but that hardly seems like an excuse when Fred Armisen recorded radio voices for Grand Theft Auto IV with the same number of people.)

Yet call out all Muslims for the acts of a few will get you pilloried. So why is it okay to smear an entire religion over these few idiots? Or is this because it's okay to bash Christian sects?

I love the idea of upvoting entire articles, though this would have to be something that the Publisher could turn on and off. We do have a ton of other features currently in the works—following (and blocking!) other users, bookmarking articles during the review process, to read later (I find myself wanting to read the articles that other people are commenting on, as I'm reviewing their comments!), following conversations, and so much more. Thanks for your enthusiasm, Melinda, and your patience! It's a brand-new way to approach comments, and we're going to continue to improve it. We welcome all suggestions and feedback!

Troll free since 2016.

This bitch is nuts. Who would read a book by a woman.

Awesome!

Not for long! (Troll-In-Training since 2016)

Commenting for the sake of commenting to rate other comments to better comment on our new comment system.

Interesting concept. How does Civil Comments plan to monetize their operation?

Pity the menu lost so much vegan food! The Mash Tun was a favorite beer bar for all the delicious tempeh stuff. Excited the staff is still there, can't wait to try the new beers.

I already see dozens of "just commenting to vote on comments to be able to comment" type of comments. This voting system is completely insane- you're assuming people have the extra time to *actually read* multiple non related comments? I would love to see this system installed on oregonlive.com - they have enough online visitors and an established "troll" base to really need this service. With as little online activity as wweek has - it will discourage further growth here.

Very cool project!

Awesome! Signed up just to give this a shot... good luck to your enterprise!

disqus has way more functionality and obviously a huge following - it can increase visitor count significantly. disqus also has a moderator feature - a feature that wweek either never wanted to pay their staff to undertake, or never developed a group of people they could trust to do it on their behalf on a volunteer basis.

YET ANOTHER BARACK OBAMA LIBERAL MEDIA CONSPIRACY BY THE THOUGHT CONTROL POLICE. I DIDENT SPEND 30 YEARS MIXING CONCRETE TO LET AMERICA FALL TO THE COMMIES. THE TAXES HERE ARE SO HIGH I CANT EVEN AFFORD A KEYBOARD WITH A WORKING CAPS LOCK. PORTLAND HAS BEEN GOING DOWNHILL FOR YEARS, NO WONDER THE TEA PARTY IS MAKING A COMEBACK. WHATS NEXT FLOURAIDE IN THE WATER SUPPLY?

I haven't seen the kind of comments you're mentioning. I'm interested in where this system works and where it's having problems. Do you have a link you could share that has comments like you mentioned?

I'm crazy about that illustration! I never would have thought to pitch everything so yellow and orange.

wmcelha, there are several new and exciting vegan and gluten free options on the new menu! Buffalo tostones are a fun, vegan, gluten free, soy free option. Not to mention a killer new veggie burger, vegan tacos, and several nice salads. Hope to see you there soon!

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I love WW content but the comment section has polluted for far too long. The lack of community moderation gave a loud megaphone to a small number of right wing trolls.

Probably because they consistently waste funds on trendy projects like green bike boxes -- which cost a fortune and have to be repainted every couple of years. Oy.

The system is set up so if traffic is slow, an algorithm takes over until it picks up.

Because the people who drive cars more are the ones who cause more wear and tear on the roads? Pretty fair and straightforward.

Affordable housing gets built pursuant to tax #3, immediately becomes less affordable pursuant to tax #2. Brilliant!

Tried this out on another post. Having to rate three other comments and then my own - is the lead designer a big Foucault fan? Feels like panopticomments. I suspect you won't go back, but I prefer Disqus because of the ubiquity and notifications system.

"winning arguments against any member of diversity" You may have inadvertently given Civil Comments an idea for the 2.0 version of their system. 1. Is this a good comment? 2. Is this comment civil? 3. Did this comment totally just win the argument???

I had a little trouble getting signed up, but after a brief email exchange with the folks at Civil everything appears to be working now. If they're successful in their goal, I'll be extremely pleased.

Are you taxed as a resident of the state you were in when you bought the ticket, or as a resident of the state you are in when you claim the ticket? If it's the latter, I suppose a theoretical lucky Oregonian will have to decide whether it's worth $90m in exchange for being stuck with the hated "Californian" moniker.

The letter writing campaign to get livestock off of Malheur Refuge started in the late '70's. The death threat phoned in to Nancy and Denzel's home was in 1979; along with two other friends I was hired a bodyguard to help protect N&D that weekend. The Hammond's ejection of the Ferguson's from the Diamond Dance was the year or two before the death threat. Great article WW and Jim D. For the last 10 days, lots of us have been wishing we could hear Denzel make witty quips about the Bundycon's occupation of the refuge hq. Sacred Cows at the public trough is easy to get on Amazon. Read and learn, read and learn ... great history of western livestock abuses ...

Mormons have had a complicated relationship with federal law.

Send more dildos, STAT.

I've been loosely following Civil Comments since it was announced late last year; I even tried a beta demonstration. One thing I've been wondering is: will users will have to sign up for new profiles on any site that uses Civil, or do you have one Civil profile that you'd use on any partner site?

My sign-up just now couldn't have been smoother!

I couldn't be more pleased. Comments on many sites too often get overtaken by trolls. It's the first I've heard of Civil, but I like its intent and encourage other publications in town to consider comments as a platform for engagement rather than a troll-driven click driver intended to boost online ad rates.

Thanks so much for following our progress and helping to test the software, David! To answer your question: you'll have one over-arching Civil account where you can manage different profiles for different sites. Of course, you're welcome to use the same information across all sites! We decided that it'd be best to be able to present yourself differently to different communities, though. I might, for example, want to be portland_hipster15 here on Willamette Week, but prefer to be MrWhiskers on Cat Enthusiast Digest!

Enterprise licenses are available now, and we'll have tiered small business plans available very soon! We will also have a free, public version out later this year.

This is certainly not good journalism by any stretch of the imagination, but they are words, and if this is the metric by which Willamette Week chooses to publish a journalist, then by all means publish Brace Belden.

This was completely fascinating. But it left me with a question I haven't seen reported elsewhere either: These guys identify as ranchers, so who are their customers? What are the economics of their situation -- are they in the same situation as chicken farmers, where they have had their livelihoods squeezed away ... I'd like to understand what drives someone who seems to have so much to be so alienated, and their economic situation must play into that.

Thanks so much for your input, and for giving us a chance! We do have user following (and blocking!) as well as more notifications in the works for future versions. I hope you'll stick around and let us know what you think! And yes, the software architect, Aja, is a Foucault fan.

I think you left out one very important organization who help the mentally ill over 18. NAMI Multnomah. They help people with mental distress find within or without NAMI to find them the services that can be most beneficial to them. I am a volunteer for NAMI Multnomah in their Connection program. It is a walk-in group to people 18 and up. No matter the diagnosis we welcome them and help them learn new coping skills and develop tools to further help them learn to cope from week to week. We have groups all over Multnomah County. By going to http://nami.multnomah.org/. You will with out much difficulty find the list of Connection Groups and their times and locations.

Thanks for the info! One other thing I just noticed: in the email I got about your reply, the link to view it didn't work (at least not from Mail.app on OS X). Looks like it came through as x-webdoc:// and probably doesn't know how to deal with that scheme. Really love what you're doing with Civil Comments, though! Can't wait to see it on more sites. Might even bring back comments on my personal site once it's available!

Interesting idea. I tend to use content blockers on sites that I know don't moderate comments very well. If they adopted a system like this I might stop doing that.

This was quite a comprehensive list. Goody for the writers and the people that researched for this guide.

Ryan Bundy seems like a nice, responsible human being who has been sold a bill of goods by his intellectually domineering brother, who he idolizes. Ammon has a bunch of other similarly situated nutters following him as well. Where? No one quite knows. And, unless you live in Burns no one cares. Personally, I am glad these bearded, cammo wearing, narrowly educated , nuisances....are there and not here. Traffic is bad enough. No reason to make it worse with a Constitutional Pagent Play in the Federal Building in downtown PDX. And, repulsive as their cammo costumes are ( all available at Cabela's and Andy and Bax) with their brandishing weapons it's a very immature male form of exhibitionism....cowboys and indians for middle aged men.

All the framed boxes must take up extra code and bandwidth usage to send all the extra code to our browsers.. Then there is all the "2 more replies" buttons to click on - that is amazingly annoying - I don't want to have to click on half a dozen "more replies" buttons to see what is being said. And really, you have to vote on 3 other replies? What percentage of your users wait more than 1/2 second before randomly clicking on a response? Oh well, I digress.

Ah, so part of the "back end" and "algorithms" - automatic comment rejection if you don't vote on the 3 random comments in a way that is conforming enough to the way other users vote - or if you vote too fast, as I assumed many would do - just clicking a random button too quickly means that you're unwilling to "participate" - you just want to "comment" which doesn't ensure a "civil" community of commenters : Screen grab from a rejected comment : i5guy 3 hours ago Rejected Personally, I already don’t have the time or energy to actually read the stuff they ask me to vote on. I’ll just randomly click on yes sorta or no to make the buttons go away. Problems were detected in the ratings you left for your peers.

To anyone reading this article. That's me and my friends in this picture. I would like to point out this "journalist" asked us zero questions. She just snapped our picture and left. And then writes an article trashing us, with no background? That's some real class A journalism. Kigurmi run by Sazac is a European company. And last time I checked a onzie of a cheetah bought at target is fine but suddenly I'm wearing one bought online and I'm appropiating a whole country? And if that wasn't bad enough the whole second half is trashing furries? Maybe next time you should think before writing an article antagonizing teenagers trying to do their Christmas tradition of getting pictures with Santa...

Thanks, David! And yes, that's a known issue, new to installing on WW. Working on it! :)

Hey i5guy, that's a good point about "more replies" appearing too soon in the thread. What do you think about changing it so that, say, it takes four comments before that button shows up?

They're providing a service to the sites they're on, I assume those sites pay for that service.

let me some up the heavy vibers feelings: GO BACK TO CALIFORNIA.

I thought Willamette week was better than this. Using weasel wording and referring to a vanity fair hit piece to spread a misinformed view what furriers are. We all do not obsessed about and or dress up. Only 10% 15% furs dress up in costume; you find a great ratio of costumers (cosplay) at Kumoricon and New Con than a fur con. We fur have many different and dare say family friendly safe for work interest including art, role play and literature. In fact looking at the Loyd center piece, the pictures could been take around January 2-3. We had a furry meet up Loyd's Center and the "reporter" could had easily missed us.

One more drink related item you missed IPA (that is looking at my grocery store beer cooler). I like a good IPA but there is more to beer than IPA.

Tuesday Jan. 13, members of this socalled 'militia' traveled to John Day,Or to try to enlist the sherif there to come to Malheur and support them. He refused to go without the approval of the local sheriff in Burns, Dave Ward. Sheriff Ward said he only wanted The John Day sheriff to come to Burns if he would be willing to 'shame and humiliate' the trespassers into leaving. The Bundy Bunch are armed terrorist idiots who are attempting to poison my State with their toxic and divisive brand of 'politics'. They need to be arrested and prosecuted. Rallies to support public lands and the Malheur Refuge are being held in PDX, Eugene, and other cities across Or. next Tuesday Jan. 19: check out #SupportMalheur. And yes, I have lived in both rural Or (25 years) and urban Or.

AND Left wing trolls! Just because someone agrees with you politically doesn't mean they're doing so civilly!

Tuesday Jan. 13, members of this socalled 'militia' traveled to John Day,Or to try to enlist the sherif there to come to Malheur and support them. He refused to go without the approval of the local sheriff in Burns, Dave Ward. Sheriff Ward said he only wanted The John Day sheriff to come to Burns if he would be willing to 'shame and humiliate' the trespassers into leaving. The Bundy Bunch are armed terrorist idiots who are attempting to poison my State with their toxic and divisive brand of 'politics'. They need to be arrested and prosecuted. Rallies to support public lands and the Malheur Refuge are being held in PDX, Eugene, and other cities across Or. next Tuesday Jan. 19: check out #SupportMalheur. And yes, I have lived in both rural Or (25 years) and urban Or.

Kay's is one of the best bars in the city, but you don't have a section for the neighborhood.

Did you even go on Hawthorne, or only Yelp it? What is this? The only thing to do is go to Float On? Seriously? I am very sorry for you.

Has anyone in LDS leadership expressed their denial of support for the terrorists or called them out on the seditious, illegal actions???? NO! So could the cult be supporting that action of the Bundy clan and their minions?

I think Wweek is in a strange spot with that. Their comments can be active, but they're nowhere near as busy as say, OregonLive. Forcing the writers or other staff to monitor comments might be overkill. I definitely get a newspaper not wanting outsiders handling that, for fear of confusion and accusations of bias. It seems like every OregonLive comment thread has accusations of bias due to deleted posts despite repeated insistence that comment moderation is not handled in-house. I've also seen several communities where conforming to the political view is more of a metric for desirability than anything to do with tone or actual content, and mods reinforced that. The results of volunteers may....vary, to be polite.

I saw @christa_m mention this a little below, but I'm curious how the system combats the echo chamber effect, especially on contentious issues? I can imagine many stories where opinions which run against the (Portland) mainstream are viewed as inherently uncivil, such as supporting Trump's position on...well pretty much anyone that isn't white, or say supporting the Kleins in the Sweet Cakes by Melissa saga. How do you convince people that an opinion which is to some degree derived from some form of prejudice is still "civil" and deserving of at least being heard?

Get rid of the "more messages". Especially within a thread.

If they offered a Gluten Free Crust we would be impressed, but when we asked about it, they were pretty dismissive of the idea. Thanks Papa Murphy's down the street and Pizzicato in Hillsdale for GF options. We'll stick with them.

Happy to see that the folks "in the room" are themselves from varying backgrounds. .

Hopefully there will be enough commenters who are honestly here to have a civil discussion to allow civil comments that challenge conventional wisdom. The posts that challenge conventional wisdom yet aren't civil won't hit the thread, and, sure, some folks will always try and scam the system by not allowing comments that they disagree with thru, but I wouldn't be surprised if many of the folks that take that approach when reviewing comments are the same ones who are having comments denied for being uncivil. If that's the case it may be somewhat of a self-correcting problem, where they become bored with not having any comments post and go elsewhere. I'm just speculating however only time will tell. I also would not be surprised if I was totally off base on all of this.

Nice. :) Although it's a shame the resolution on the files make some of the lettering tough to read. I'm not sure what the last word in the lower right strip is. I like the design of the 2000s guy in the third strip. That's a guy who grew up watching Kevin Smith movies.

If it is effective in slowing us down in order to reflect upon how we engage with others and draws attention to the humanity of each recipient, then I approve.

Hi David, we did consider all of these possibilities when building our system! In fact, we assume people will try to game it; that's why we have a lot going on behind the scenes algorithmically. The commenter-facing part of the app is very straightforward, but there are a lot of checks and balances on the backend to prevent coordinated attacks and also to keep comments sections from becoming echo chambers. Banning insulting words isn't enough, unfortunately; people will always be smarter than word filters, even if the algorithm tries to take context into account. We do have a backup algorithm for low-volume situations that basically does this (plus a few other things), but it's not as effective as human reviewers. I hear you on the "more replies" button; I don't think we'll remove it entirely, but I agree it's appearing too often, after too few comments. We'll be pushing updates very soon!

But *I* want to be MrWhiskers!

I'm so glad Portland Development Commission, Kate Brown, and Business Oregon are taking direct action to correct the gap in participation! I think Elevate is going to do great things over the next five years. The Portland startup scene has the chance to set itself apart here, and this is definitely a step in the right direction! Very cool.

Sorry, Rod, you'll have to be Mr_Whiskers or MrWhiskers1. Gotta act fast on those usernames! Cat Enthusiast Digest is no place to dilly-dally.