This won't solve a commenting problem. At least, not the commenting problem they claim to have. It will get people talking about Engadget, and more specifically, it will draw attention to the supposed drama within the reader community. Engadget claims that only a small percentage of its readers are commenters. I'd say that percentage is likely to increase thanks to all this new talk - and that was the plan all along.
Engadget is guilty of flame baiting their reader community with headlines designed to incite wars within the comments. It's good for business because it increases traffic and page views and ad impressions. The ONLY reason to shut that down is to bet that it will increase those numbers when it comes back.
It's enough to inspire me to remove them from my RSS feeds. I don't like being manipulated so blatently.
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Two words. . . .
Publicity stunt.
This won't solve a commenting problem. At least, not the commenting problem they claim to have. It will get people talking about Engadget, and more specifically, it will draw attention to the supposed drama within the reader community. Engadget claims that only a small percentage of its readers are commenters. I'd say that percentage is likely to increase thanks to all this new talk - and that was the plan all along.
Engadget is guilty of flame baiting their reader community with headlines designed to incite wars within the comments. It's good for business because it increases traffic and page views and ad impressions. The ONLY reason to shut that down is to bet that it will increase those numbers when it comes back.
It's enough to inspire me to remove them from my RSS feeds. I don't like being manipulated so blatently.