PG, if you really want to get hard data on whether comments have gotten "meaner", I'd be happy to help with that.
It seems the chief complaint is that comments are no longer increasing the happiness and confidence of the community, but rather raising anxiety and hostility. My startup is based on an algorithm for measuring the emotional impact of text and does in fact measure these four emotions.
I'd be pleased to help measure how comments' effects on readers have changed over time. I would do it myself, but I know you don't want me anonymously scraping every comment for the last 3+ years, and it'd be much faster to just get a data dump from the server.
It seems the chief complaint is that comments are no longer increasing the happiness and confidence of the community, but rather raising anxiety and hostility. My startup is based on an algorithm for measuring the emotional impact of text and does in fact measure these four emotions.
I'd be pleased to help measure how comments' effects on readers have changed over time. I would do it myself, but I know you don't want me anonymously scraping every comment for the last 3+ years, and it'd be much faster to just get a data dump from the server.
Drop me a line if interested. :)