Ventura editor tired of "comment" cesspool

All online comments go back to 3 things.

1. Racism in general about blacks and Hispanics

2. Somehow Obama is a socialist, commie, a muslim, or a Kenyan

3. The media has a liberal bias

Without fail, one of those themes enter every single news story out there. take a look at a Politico story comments.

I would do away with anonymous comments. It becomes race-baiting on national stories, and on local stories it becomes a kind of way to anonymously embarrass the subject. Look at online comments during a mayor's race or a budget fight. It gets personal. the comment section should be like a letter to the editor. Have to have name attached.

 

You clearly have no concept of what it's like to be in the trenches of comment moderation. You have to staff almost around the clock to make sure the libelous comments don't sit on the site for too long. It is extremely time consuming to deal with these idiots and try to offer them "customer service." Banning them does no good because they come right back. I once banned the same guy 53 times.

53 times. That's time I don't have to post your story, or edit your video, or extract your audio from your recorder because you don't have the right cord, or make your headline SEO friendly because you forgot to, or fix your hyperlinks because they're broken, or make the poll you want, or learn Flash to do that quiz like you saw on the New York Times website, or make a photo gallery to go with your story, or make a PDF of the documents you brought back, or work on that special web project, etc. etc.

Nope, that's time I'm spending babysitting some anonymous troll who insists our site should host his racist/sexist/libelous comments because FIRST AMENDMENT!!!1!. And those are the trolls. The ones who know what they're doing and know it's wrong but are getting their lulz.

Those who aren't trolls but are ideological hotheads take up a lot of my time, too. When I delete a post that doesn't follow the rules, they're immediately on my e-mail or phone demanding to know why. They want to debate the finer points of the mayor's hypothetical affair with livestock and think I'm clearly out to get them because I don't want the truth to be known. Explaining it to them means I'm on the phone for 20 minutes each time. Refusing to explain it to them (because, you know, there is breaking news going on) means they call the brass and I get in trouble for not providing "customer service." It's a no-win situation, and every minute spent dealing with comment moderation is another minute not spent on journalistic endeavors.

 

I'm not a fan of comments at all, though I understand they do have a purpose. We're under a pay wall, to where only online and print subscribers can comment on stories, and there is STILL mindless drivel that plagues even the most mundane of articles. I do like the previously mentioned idea of having readers comment via Facebook so there's a name attached.

 

I like the Facebook idea, but there are no marketing upsides for the brass.

When a website uses Facebook Connect or Open ID, the person's registration is with Facebook. It's Facebook that gets to count them among its denizens, that gets access to their precious demographic information, that gets to data mine for what soda they drink or what they want for Christmas.

The original website, podunkpress.com, gets none of that. Sure, they get the page view and the comment, but that profile/email address isn't available for direct marketing or advertising or data mining. Much less value to the brass than if you make them register directly on your website.