Hi - I just want to clarify a few things here. Shaggy stated:
Currently if a comment gets 3 downvotes it gets removed
This is not accurate. If a comment receives multiple downvotes it is “flagged for moderation”. When this happens the comment is removed from the stream, and is put into the moderation queue for review. Same thing happens if you click “report as spam”.
We then review the flagged comments on a somewhat regular basis, and either approve or deny them. The truth is that this task has not been clearly assigned to anyone specifically, so has been getting done by multiple people without a clearly written guideline as to what is acceptable and what is not. It seems that the original comment in question probably should have been approved, but instead was denied for no clear reason. My apologies! I’m investigating to see if this can be undone.
So definitely more of a bandwidth issue than a censorship/Stalinist issue. That said, we have been known to be overzealous with removing posts, comments, threads, etc. in the past. We definitely err on the side of Libertians rather than content watchdogs.
Regarding the other comments here, when the new design came on line the presentation of the tiles definitely did not provide enough context for each post, leading to the perception of link bait. We’ve since added a subtitle, the first 50 words of body copy, the publish date and the publishing channel to each tile, along with the title and lead image. We had hoped this was enough information to help you decide whether to click through to the article, but this clearly does not seem to be the case.
We’ve discussed further adjustments to the presentation of the posts on the home page, and there will be ongoing changes over the next several months. People seem to have a hard time following the chronology of posts, so that is one thing we’ll work on.
Finally, specific editorial suggestions are always welcome. It is hard to work with requests for ‘real’ or ‘deep and meaningful’ content without knowing what is meant by those labels.