“Comments Disabled” - That’s something new.

[alchemistmuffin]

I saw the latest article on mask mandate, and I saw something surprising: “Comments Disabled”. I’ve seen comments on this site being disabled on certain article AFTER the discussion has turned into something like monkey throwing poo at each other, but never from the get go. (Right away after article was posted, meaning no comments, period)

Is this means the political section of the Macrumors forum is going away permanently and all political based discussion is banned? For once, I feel this is welcome change, this is a Mac forum, not some comment section on YouTube or news website.

 

[Darth.Titan]

Not new at all actually. Any article on the front page with political ramifications or where they feel the comments will devolve into a flaming disaster will usually have the comments disabled.

Ever since PRSI bit the dust.

 

[Weaselboy]

This has been in place for a while and is used (like @Darth.Titan mentioned) for article topics experience has shown tend to create a lot of work for the moderators. It is used case by case, and there will continue to be discussion threads in the Political News section.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

PRSI was shut down? That's news to me, but also never actively seek it. It does explain why it has been so quiet on the forums for some time, which in this case, has been a good thing.

Is there a thread discussing the demise of PRSI?

 

[Weaselboy]

Is there a thread discussing the demise of PRSI?

Politics, Religion, Social Issues Forum Closed (July 2021)

We are closing the Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum, effective immediately. For regulars of the PRSI forums, I apologize. We've long kept a politics forum on this site in order to allow users to discuss practically any topic beyond just Apple and Tech. And that's the reason I've...

forums.macrumors.com

Here ^ from July.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Thank you good weasel.

 

[i.am.apple.corporate]

Why are "Comments disabled" for Apple Delays Corporate Return to Offices Indefinitely?

 

[I7guy]

Why are "Comments disabled" for Apple Delays Corporate Return to Offices Indefinitely?

Probably because the editors felt the article would devolve into a flame war.

 

[theheadguy]

Why are "Comments disabled" for Apple Delays Corporate Return to Offices Indefinitely?

Because of this. Although Arn seemed to stress that the examples I provided were unmoderated, I get the sense that he got my point (even if he didn't explicitly acknowledge it) that those examples were used because they simply weren't one-offs. The forums have just devolved generally, unfortunately.

 

[amartinez1660]

I find it sad really.
Maybe macrumors is not the place to comment on politically ramified things? Ok, I can entertain that. Then in that case maybe macrumors shouldn’t be posting anything remotely political, period, then.

In the latest posts as of this writing, where I was curious to see comments about current Apple’s activities on the east, with the sanctions and conflicts going on (I’m truly careful here to not even mention country names in fear of being censored, that’s how bad I feel with all this, indignating sentiment) is met with “comments disabled”. The silence.

A lot of the good also comes with a lot of bad. We can all agree to that and are capable to remove the wheat from the chaff. A lot of the insight and secondary perspectives sometimes come from people with golden nuggets of advices, suggestions, ideas point of views, etc…

Overall though, yes, I understand that this is not a news outlet, shouldn’t be treated as such as it is just a rumors based webpage and should look forward to actual real news with full engagement and comments allowed elsewhere.

 

[KaliYoni]

I come to MR to read about Apple's products and to participate in discussions of shared areas of interest with other Apple users. If I want to see adversarial debates about political, religious, or social topics, there are a lot of other online places, with better tailored moderation and ToS policies, to go to.

 

[max2]

Not new at all.

 

[amartinez1660]

I come to MR to read about Apple's products and to participate in discussions of shared areas of interest with other Apple users. If I want to see adversarial debates about political, religious, or social topics, there are a lot of other online places, with better tailored moderation and ToS policies, to go to.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, post like this one: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/25/ukraine-apple-block-app-store-access-russia/ shouldn’t make it through or if they still will, then they should have a big massive red sign that conveys ”no comments are allowed on this one”.
I don’t want to have to click first to be able to see if it can or can’t be commented on, in that case I’ll go to said better tailored moderated places with the same news instead.

This is out of principle, I comment on maybe on 0.001% of the articles and probably wouldn’t comment anyways, but something really rubs me the wrong way seeing that others can’t state what they think about any article or what they had to add or subtract to it, good or bad.

 

[Realityck]

MacRumors wisely considers the volatility of topics, anything that can be interpreted as political has its comments disabled. It's just better to read about some news only while gaining some technical insights to everything related to Apple.

 

[DFZD]

On a brink of a possible WW3. Maybe weeks from now. An event that would possibly change life of an entire generation.
But since it's a Mac site let's keep it non political. The max you can say is Peace or "No War"

 

[russell_314]

I don’t miss the political forms. It’s easy to get sucked into politics. Discussion can be good but usually with certain topics like politics or religion people have such strong feelings that any comment with different beliefs than theirs causes an emotional rather than logical response. As a participant in these discussions I don’t think it’s constructive. It goes into a big flame war and while that can sometimes be funny it’s terrible for the mods who have to deal with it and try to remain impartial.

 

[I7guy]

I wholeheartedly agree with this, post like this one: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/25/ukraine-apple-block-app-store-access-russia/ shouldn’t make it through or if they still will, then they should have a big massive red sign that conveys ”no comments are allowed on this one”.
I don’t want to have to click first to be able to see if it can or can’t be commented on, in that case I’ll go to said better tailored moderated places with the same news instead.

This is out of principle, I comment on maybe on 0.001% of the articles and probably wouldn’t comment anyways, but something really rubs me the wrong way seeing that others can’t state what they think about any article or what they had to add or subtract to it, good or bad.

That particular quoted post, one can understand why comments are disabled. It has all the key discussion points for a long running, never ending flame-bait type battle:

 

[mpetrides]

Frankly, I log onto MacRumors to get my latest (surprise, surprise!) Mac rumors/Apple rumors fix. I have no interest in watching this site devolve into political flame wars. It’s the reason I have largely stopped using Facebook—too dang many political posts with too high a vitriol level.

 

[Defactomonkey]

Maybe if a topic is too sensitive for the unwashed masses to comment on then it might not be appropriate at all to post on a technology forum?

 

[I7guy]

Maybe if a topic is too sensitive for the unwashed masses to comment on then it might not be appropriate at all to post on a technology forum?

The issue is that events that affect Apple should be reported on MacRumors, even if comments are disabled....in my opinion.

 

[FoxyKaye]

I honestly welcome it - I've been here a LONG time, and frankly, PRSI, and what should be ordinary discussions on other threads devolving into trollbait and flame wars are why I don't really participate here anymore. So much so, that I missed the announcement that PRSI was shutting down last year. So, thank you @arn for making that call.

 

[FelixDerKater]

How depressing to see this creep from platform to platform...

 

[Velli]

That particular quoted post, one can understand why comments are disabled. It has all the key discussion points for a long running, never ending flame-bait type battle:

The thing that surprised, and frankly saddened, me was that a post about Apple celebrating international women's day had to have comments disabled.

 

[ajfahey]

The thing that surprised, and frankly saddened, me was that a post about Apple celebrating international women's day had to have comments disabled.

Then clearly not everything that is political is political to you. The very existence of an International Women’s Day is political. Also, I challenge you to point out any part of it that has anything to do with rumors surrounding Apple technology. There is none. The Apple press release was exclusively an an exercise in corporate virtue signaling.

 

[mpetrides]

Then clearly not everything that is political is political to you. The very existence of an International Women’s Day is political. Also, I challenge you to point out any part of it that has anything to do with rumors surrounding Apple technology. There is none. The Apple press release was exclusively an an exercise in corporate virtue signaling.

But it IS a press release from AAPL, so that inherently justifies covering it on MacRumors. Not that it's likely to get any real traction as a topic for ongoing discussion—except if the trolls come out of the woodwork to bait people. And those trolls probably explain why comments needed to be disabled.