Getting rid of online comments

I know, it's been discussed before ...

KSL.com, the biggest TV/Radio station in Utah and the new news partner with the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, just discontinued allowing comments on stories. http://ksl.com/u/3xkA

Wonder if that will happen at deseretnews.com next since the two entities are merging news operations in the next couple of months.

 

We changed our commenting system that takes users to another site owned by the company. I think we've had about five comments in three months since the change.

 

This topic has been discussed a lot.

However I've made it my mission the past month to check online comments on stories at various newspapers.
I have noticed many of the same people comment on all the stories in a little community of from what I can tell are miserable people.
If publishers think online comments are a fair representation of the audience, then publishers do what I've done the past month and check out comments on sports stories. I find the same names of petty people over and over.

So at the most a couple dozen individuals comment over and over day after day it is appearing to me.
That value is ???? Please tell me.
The numbers of people commenting are not significant, publishers. I will repeat that until the day I'm laid off, which obviously is coming as it is for most of us.

But it's pretty apparent from reading the comments (many of which attack the publication and/or the reporter who wrote the story) that the businesses that allow such attacks do not care about the reporter. Allowing such attacks devalues the product.
But hey, clicks from the online commentors and their opinions are important.
Yeah right.

I've got a pretty significant sample size and after I get laid off I'll be shopping my findings to the highest bidder.

 

Well, I've read your articles. And they're HORRIBLE. I mean, to think that I spent 50 years as a bus driver in the South Bronx and this is my reward. To come home to my unheated room (Oh, don't make me get into my lousy landlord!) and be forced to read your depressing "news"...

 

Threads like this are a JOKE!!!! Maybe sportsjournalists.com should break down and hire some people who know how to post on a message board. What few readers are left are getting sick of the bias against the junior varsity and middle school teams and only telling the varsity's side of the story. This is shows exactly why the entire internet is going out of business. This used to be a good website.

 

It's liberuls and welfair queens who are ruining this grate country!

And the Podunk Plodders suck. Ha ha!

 

STFU!!!!!!!!!

 

You know the person who killed the comments is an illegal immigrant, and this Socilist rag of a thread is protecting him.

 

There's a huge country corruption scandal here in Cleveland. The PD has had multiple stories on it lately. Big-time politicans are going to jail for years and years. It is being called one of the largest local political corruption busts in the country. The comments on the stories are in the hundreds and have been great.

 

...would be awesome.

What gets comments on our Web site:
1. Sex scandals.
2. Criminal battery cases/domestic abuse cases, where people who claim to know everything that happened decided to post anonymously about it on our forums instead of going to law enforcement and helping them solve the case.
3. Animal abuse. Specifically, unfounded charges of abusing horses.

What doesn't get comments on our Web site:
1. Sports.
2. Anything positive.

 

I kind of like the idea of one comment per story. It would eliminate pissing matches and dialogues.

 

You win!