No more reader comments

And another complaint this place gets is that post of yours right above the one quoted here. :

 

From a legal standpoint, deskslave is right on.

 

Cmon. Most papers have somebody who removes at least a comment or two from time to time. I mean the ones that accuse people of commiting crimes and using the N word. I mean anonymous posters have done that at our shop and those comments are removed. So most places would lose that legal argument. Haven't you seen at least comments with the N word removed? Or saying somebody is a molester? I really truly hope some newspapers get sued and lose millions. They've been warned with the google lawsuit.

 

1. I never said you don't have to read them all.
2. Yes I am familiar with the dangers of comments, but to just exclude them outright because they're too much work is, well, lame.

 

So you're telling me the majority of newspaper editors/management/decision makers aren't so woefully behind the curve when it comes to the web and communicating with readers, that this isn't an issue? So many are so defensive and protective of the "paper" medium, they can't see the forest for the trees.

 

Ridiculous. Newspapers are so busy wasting time trying to stay ahead of the curve that it's ridiculous, just because they are scared to death of being seen as unhip to the web.

What is out there on the web that newspapers aren't doing? We post video, we crowdsource, we blog, we tweet, we have facebook pages, we follow every little trend the web comes up with short of creating 4chan memes. (And now I wish I hadn't posted that, because doubtlessly people like you will start trying to tell me that the reason the business is failing is that we don't put lines like 'sup dog, i herd you like scores, so i put the score in my lead so you can score when we lead' in our stories.) We even follow the web ethic that everything should be free, to the point of hamstringing our own product.

We do this even though there is no appreciable gain in revenue against the significant outlay of time. We do this even though anybody who really knows the Web knows that in a year, Twitter will be overrun by old people who are behind the curve and facebook will be ignored the way MySpace is now. These web darling sites have short shelf lives, but newspapers have been in on them every single step of the way.

Again I ask: What cutting edge web angle are newspapers not attempting?

 

Maybe you do. We don't. We get arguments, libelous statements, name-calling and falsehoods. No one has ever used our comment section to say, "Hey, I have a story idea!" They use our comment section to blindly and anonymously accuse people of corruption, sex crimes, adultery, petty theft and lying. No one, repeat, NO ONE has ever commented on one of my stories except to accuse one of the athletes or coaches involved of some sort of wrongdoing. EVER! I am therefore not "completely wrong." For my paper and my situation, I am completely correct.

 

Here's the question I have.

Would newspapers be in worse shape if five years ago they had rejected ever having online comments?

Say they had never allowed comments. Would the Rocky Mountain News be operating and doing well? Would thousands and thousands of journalists still have their jobs? Would the New York Times not be in peril? Would countless small papers not have gutted their staff?

No. Allowing comments is doing nothing for the bottom line, it's not bringing in any money, it's not saving any jobs. What it is doing is lowering the reputation of newspapers. So if they're going to go down, why not go down with at least their dignity intact?

If comments had been the savior of newspapers and their finances, then I'd be having really serious troubles with the ethics of keeping or deleting comments. But they haven't. They've done nothing. As Rick says, newspapers are now doing everything they're supposedly accused of not being able to do, and it has done nothing to stop the tide. So, what again is the positive of online comments?

 

YAY!!!!! :-* :-* :-* There are not enough smilies to convey my happiness at this.

Though, really, I think either a pay-for-comment policy or professional moderation would go a long way to making the comments worthwhile. And I don't, for the record, entirely buy the "If we moderate they can sue!" argument. Stories are "moderated" and that seems to work just fine.

I wish papers would just admit they didn't have the money to hire a copy editor/web person to moderate the comments. Because that is, I think, the primary reason they are not moderated.

 

Web comments are the bane of my existence. I have no problems putting the kebosh on them for many of the reasons mentioned above.

I am one of the three people at my shop assigned to moderate web comments. We require people to register, but they can have anonymous usernames. Our site gets 700-900 comments per day. Only twice have we gotten news tips. We get more tips through Twitter.

We used to employ an army of part-timers to read comments before they were approved, but in cost-cutting they let those people go and switched to a post-moderation system. Users can click "report abuse" to send an e-mail notification to the moderators. We keep track of every report and action.

Let me give you a rundown of my moderation-related duties for the past 36 hours, as based on my e-mail inbox.

10:49 AM: comment reported
10:58 AM: comment reported
11:08 AM: delete comment, attack on other user
11:09 AM: delete comment, attack on other user
12:35 PM: Delete comment, vulgarity
12:49 PM: send warning e-mail to author of vulgar comment for repeated policy violations. If he does not shape up in 24 hours, profile will be banned.
1:54 PM: comment reported
3:55 PM: comment reported
3:56 PM: comment reported
3:58 PM: delete comment, attack on other user
3:59 PM: delete comment, attack on other user
4:01 PM: comment reported
4:06 PM: delete comment, attack on other user
4:09 PM: comment reported
5:07 PM: comment reported
5:11 PM: delete 3 comments, back-and-forth attacking
5:29 PM: comment reported
5:35 PM: delete comment, cursing
5:39 PM: banning user who is a regular troll (he's been banned 34 times and counting). Registers with name "Ben Dover"
7:06 PM: comment reported
7:45 PM: delete comment, libelous statement about elected official
9:07 PM: comment reported
9:11 PM: comment not deleted, flame war
7:00 AM: comment reported
7:00 AM: comment reported
8:04 AM: comment reported
8:57 AM: comment reported
9:11 AM: comment reported (we usually have 5-10 of these waiting for us in the morning; on a bad day it can be about 20)
9:31 AM: comment not deleted, just dislikes the opinion
9:37 AM: delete 4 comments, racist statements
10:57 AM: delete 6 comments, racist and libelous statements
11:08 AM: send warning e-mail to author of 5 deleted comments
11:12 AM: comment reported
11:17 AM: comment deleted, attack on other user
11:21 AM: banning Ben Dover again
11:28 AM: comment reported
11:47 AM: comment reported
11:50 AM: delete comment, attack on user
12:15 PM: comment reported
12:17 PM: delete comment, attack on user
12:43 PM: comment reported
12:47 PM: banning Ben Dover again
1:25 PM: delete comment, racist
1:30 PM: comment reported
2:02 PM: delete comment, "outing" the identity of another poster
2:50 PM: comment reported complaining about their comment being deleted
2:56 PM: comment reported complaining about their comment being deleted
3:29 PM: comment reported
3:32 PM: comment reported
3:34 PM: comment reported
3:37 PM: banning Ben Dover for the third time today
3:41 PM: comment not deleted
3:44 PM: comment not deleted
3:46 PM: comment not deleted (people like to "report" opinions they disagree with)
3:57 PM: comment reported
4:03 PM: comment deleted, attack on user


As you can see, we waste a ridiculous amount of time babysitting the users who insult each other and start flame wars, then get pissy and abuse the "report abuse" button. We spend too much time dealing with the same trolls, over and over. And moderation is supposed to be a "side duty" for us.

And, I hate to say it, this was a light day. No immigration stories, no gay rights stories, no elected officials in the news, no fatal accidents. Also, this is just what got reported. Lord knows what's lurking on our site that didn't get reported.

We generally see an uptick in awful comments on the aforementioned stories, on full moon nights (I'm not kidding) and after the first of the month when the government checks have been issued and everyone is posting drunk. Sad but true.