On the occasion of the Portland Press Herald debacle (about which more here), Poynter’s Damon Kiesow has a great roundup of various strategies that news sites are testing to deal with chaotic comment sections. There’s a wide range of schemes. Real-name verification seems to be becoming trendy. The Huffington Post gives the job to its readers and makes it into a kind of game:
—In addition to having comment moderators, The Huffington Post turns to readers for help. In May, it began giving out “Moderator” badges to users who flag comments that the site ends up deleting.
NPR ended up giving the job to someone else:
—National Public Radio announced last week that it had begun to outsource its moderation duties to free up staff members to “concentrate on doing what we’ve always intended — to use the comments for fostering intelligent dialog, finding potential sources, fleshing out story ideas and like.”
Of course, a lot of sites simply turn off comments altogether when the threads get too messy to deal with. One paper does that, but selectively:
—The Minneapolis Star Tribune typically allows reader comments, but turns them off on selected stories that are more likely to create moderation problems.
I’ve never heard of that plan before; it seems to make practical sense, but I’m not sure how that will go over with readers. The CJR comments section, for one, is open, so chime in: what do you think is the best way to moderate comments, if at all?
The only way to "moderate" comments is to review each one before they are posted to the public. If a publication is not willing to commit the time and manpower to do that, it should not allow comments.
#1 Posted by Phillip Blanchard, CJR on Fri 22 Oct 2010 at 06:18 PM
CJR's comment streams are pretty good. I don't think they need moderating. Once in a while a post will get out of control, but that's actually pretty rare. Even your trolls are usually civil. A lot of that is the active participation of the journos, who will occasionally jump into the comments to respond. That alone is often enough to tame an unruly comment thread. Your major problem is the commercial trolls - Ugg boots et al.
However, some venues just really need to turn off their threads. They are so far out of control to be utterly worthless. Examples of those are Washington Post and Politico and Time Mag's Swampland. They let their comment streams deteriorate early on, and they are beyond repair. Just turn them off. New York Times carefully moderates their streams and they are excellent comment threads. Most of the mid-level newspaper sites are pretty worthless -- they let their comment threads go to hell early on, and there is nothing to be gained by reading most of them now.
If you look at the successful, worthwhile comment threads around the newspaper internet, they are the ones where the blogger or journo is involved or engaged with their readers. Banning or suspending is a tool to be used judiciously but is sometimes necessary. Once Drudge or Newsbusters links to your post, the whole place gets overrun by disruptive, ignorant trolls. Sometimes they never go away. If you don't ban the worst of them, the whole thing deteriorates very rapidly.
Thanks for asking.
#2 Posted by James, CJR on Fri 22 Oct 2010 at 08:46 PM
In Tampa, there is a news site that has one of the worst group of comments that I have ever seen. It's at TBO.com and the bile and hatred are unbelievable. It has gotten so bad, I don't even read them anymore.
TBO does shut down the comments occasionally, but the majority of the time it's like a group of out of control ten year olds.
#3 Posted by gopherT, CJR on Sat 23 Oct 2010 at 11:23 AM
Very thoughtful comments, guys, thanks. And James - yes, Ugg Boots spam is the bane of CJR at the moment. Will keep trying to weed that stuff out, so good, opinionated discourse like this can continue.
#4 Posted by Lauren Kirchner, CJR on Mon 25 Oct 2010 at 10:14 AM
The newspapers give the information but some people think that it is very much better to buy essay or purchase custom written essays.
#5 Posted by ClineElaine26, CJR on Mon 25 Oct 2010 at 10:18 AM
ClineElaine26? Kudos. That was a beautiful act of troll.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 25 Oct 2010 at 10:46 AM
I think the St. Louis Post-Dispatch allows offensive comments because the ensuing flame-wars drive major page views. Others papers probably use the same strategy but many of the comments in the P-D are really beyond the pale.
#7 Posted by Missouri Export, CJR on Mon 25 Oct 2010 at 12:01 PM
If you're interested in the Post-Dispatch, take a look at this piece I wrote about problems with its comments section earlier this year. I think it says a lot about how to make comment sections work.
#8 Posted by Justin Peters, CJR on Mon 25 Oct 2010 at 12:10 PM
@ Justin Peters,
The link to your piece doesn't work. Please repost.
#9 Posted by James, CJR on Mon 25 Oct 2010 at 12:35 PM
@James: Whoops. I went in and fixed the link. It should work now.
#10 Posted by Justin Peters, CJR on Mon 25 Oct 2010 at 12:55 PM
I remember that article but it was worth a reread. Thanks.
#11 Posted by Shannon, CJR on Mon 25 Oct 2010 at 03:59 PM
Deleting the comments is not the solution. The users must be made understand that what they are doing is not good. They must not behave in this way.
http://dermaliftreview.com
#12 Posted by William Shapiro, CJR on Sat 30 Oct 2010 at 03:13 AM