News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments

Strange how someone who presumably uses words for a living thinks "more like" and "exactly the same" mean, well, exactly the same.

 

Comments to a website are not letters to the editor. I don't understand why that distinction is not made more often. A letter to the editor is one person's view on an article, with no rebuttals, retorts or affirmations. Comments on a website are part of a conversation.

 

For longer than I have been saying that Tiger catching Jack was anything but a sure thing, I have been saying that the key to the start of monetization of newspaper sites and, concurrently, the cleaning up of racist bilge in comments, is charging people to post their opinions. Even if it is a nickel a comment. Getting the credit card on file is paramount.

 

They are embarrassing to newspapers and embarrassing to humanity.

 

It's amazing to me that sites haven't charged people for the privilege of commenting. All the talk about newspapers dying, and they're missing an opportunity to bring in more revenue.

Open up the comments section to people who are subscribers to your paper; and let those who don't want a hard copy pay for the right to discuss the news with other readers. It's bad enough most articles are copied and pasted on message boards, taking away revenue from ad clicks.

 

Bob - So who gets to comment in a family? Just one person? Husband and wife? What about kids? How do you figure all that out? And why are we then possibly eliminating kids who are the future of readership (as they likely don't have their own credit card; I'm not sure how many college kids have credit cards, although I do recall many in my dorm having them and quickly getting in debt, but that's another story).