My Thoughts on Comments

All comments below were found on a breitbart.com article summarizing the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Important to note is that breitbart.com is a considerably right-leaning news organization and as such many of their commenters also have a conservative bent.

Less Credible

Comment screenshot from breitbart.com article, 8/28/15

•  This commenter is undoubtedly displaying a wish that something would occur as he neatly expresses his desire that Hillary Clinton and indeed her entire staff see jail time for the email scandal.

• I'm fairly sure this is a considerably conservative commenter as he genuinely has it out for Hillary Clinton. I would assume this because people more toward the middle of the political spectrum would be more inclined to wait what the FBI investigation and Justice Department actually indict someone before advocating punishment for the alleged crime.

• This commenter comes off as unreasonable to me because he is advocating a punishment before guilt has even been determined. After all, in the United States, we try to avoid witch hunts and trial by popular opinion instead favoring a fair trial by a jury of peers. Additionally, this commenter fails to realize that using personal email was in fact not against policy at the Justice Department when Clinton was Secretary of State, regardless of it it would have been a poor choice or not.

Comment screenshot from breitbart.com article, 8/28/15

• This commenter does not really display a wish or desire or a fear. He is simply positing a statement.

• This is likely a very conservative commenter based on his belief that if Hillary Clinton were a Republican "she would already be in GITMO being Waterboarded..." On second thought, perhaps it is his subconscious desire for this to happen.

• This commenter appears unreasonable as he clearly believes that Americans perhaps are or might or perhaps should be held at Guantanamo Bay and exposed to enhanced interrogation techniques. Holding an American at Guantanamo is specifically disallowed (it only occurred once accidentally anyway) and the idea of torturing a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president is ludicrous.

More Credible

Comment screenshot from breitbart.com article, 8/28/15

•  This commenter does not really display any hopes or fears, He simply states his position on how Hillary Clinton could have come out of the mess a lot easier and potentially looking better.

• I think this is a conservative commenter as well as he is trying to blame internal struggle in the Democratic Party for the ongoing and mostly uninteresting investigation of Clinton's emails. Additionally, he is telling someone with a more liberal viewpoint to take his comments to Politico or the New York Times which are seen as more impartial news organizations or the Huffington Post which is on the liberal side.

• This commenter does not seem entirely reasonable to be completely honest. However his initial response about how Clinton could have avoided much of the unpleasantness by being more forthcoming and doing so earlier was incisive enough when compared to the rest of the thread that it was enough to consider this a more reliable comment.

Comment screenshot from breitbart.com article, 8/28/15

• Stosh's comment displays some desire that Hillary Clinton will get jail time for her possible actions but otherwise is simply sharing information.

• I think that this is also a conservative commenter based on his desire for Clinton to see jail time before there has actually been an indictment.

• I think Stosh left a more reliable comment here because rather than going into political diatribes, he compelling explains quite correctly that it is impossible for information on a secure server that is not connected to the internet to end up on an unsecure personal server without human intervention. Ultimately, his the last part of his comment where he advocated 25 years to life is premature unless she is actually indicted but otherwise Stosh is quite reasonable.

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When reading my classmates' blog posts about comments, I read one post about comments on modifications to No Child Left Behind and another about comments on the SAE OU fraternity incident. What I managed to glean from reading these two analyses is a rough outline of what is necessary to effectively craft a believable comment.

1. Perhaps most important of all, your comment must be free of any and all grammatical and spelling errors. This is the fastest way to be labeled as a crank.
2. Next in line is definitely almost as important. Please, for the love of god, be logical. No one is going to believe a single thing you say if one statement does not follow from the last.
3. Finally, and this ties in with the previous requirement, have some sort of backup. Can you quote an expert? Are you an expert? Why? Do you have a pet capybara? Really anything that will lend credence to what you you say. 96% of researchers agree that capybara owners are more credible people.

It is interesting to note that there is of a correlation between both line breaks and length to comment credibility. If it has line breaks, that means the author thinks in discrete thoughts, unlike William Faulkner. If it's long, that means the author has a lot to say. That means they're either smart or they're your crazy uncle Jeff that never stops talking at Thanksgiving.