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Comments Aren't Rocket Science
via Recovering Journalist by (author unknown) on May 08, 2008
Shared by Charlie
I just wonder when these folks are going to get it.I've said it before and I'll say it again (and again): Managing comments on newspaper Web sites isn't exactly rocket science. But newspapers seem to keep thinking that it is.
Today's hapless example: The Day, of New London, Conn., which turned on comments and discovered that, HORRORS, contributors were posting horrible things (even on wedding announcements, which is actually pretty funny). So what did The Day do? It turned the comments off—and convened a public forum about online comments, replete with various experts and editors (not necessarily the same thing), along with an earnest followup story in the paper that talks about "the relatively new and challenging world of online reader comments."
Relatively new world? Really? Maybe to The Day. But there have been online comments for more than two decades now, beginning at places like The Well, Compuserve and AOL, and advancing through too many online forums to mention—some of them even run by newspapers. There's nothing new about comments. The only thing new is the newbies in the newspaper business that don't do their homework before turning them on.
What those veteran sites have learned—which papers like The Day only seem to bother to find out through trial and error—is that fully anonymous, ungoverned comments turn into chaos. Surprise!
Let us count the ways—and the ways it could have been prevented: The Day reports that it had trouble with profanity (try a profanity filter), "irrelevant ranting" (try registration and moderation) and "vitriol" (see previous recommendations). Yep, that's pretty much the usual list of complaints. And they all could have been avoided from the jump. (I'll link to my previous post on this again.)
To repeat: This isn't rocket science, and it's hardly a new field. The Day says it is going to relaunch its comments with user registration and staff moderation (the latter is probably unnecessary if registration and user-policing are used); no word about a profanity filter (highly recommended). And like other newspapers before it who have taken these steps, The Day will discover that the comments aren't as difficult as they first appear. Gee—maybe The Day's editors could have avoided these problems if they'd just done a little research first.
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