Reader comments on the website

[Mark2010]

Some of the best bitching on the forums at my former paper is about prep and junior sports. Which coach stinks worse? Who should have done what to whom?

It's actually kind of funny. These people need to find something else to do. Oh, yeah, I forgot there IS nothing else to do in this ****-hole of a town!!

 

[JakeandElwood]

Dudes, **** the comments. People are dumb.

 

[BillyT]

I still have yet to get an adequate explanation of why advertisers would want to be associated with the sort of **** that appears in comment sections. We keep trying to figure out how to migrate our advertisers to the Web, and yet we can't see that having 100 comments about n*****s and Mexicans and how we should shoot them all on sight might not reflect well on us.

Numbers.

Pure numbers. They think the people are looking at the ads.

 

[BillyT]

Free speech is protected on our message boards as long as they aren't personal attacks or excessively vulgar.

I really wonder about this:

What do newspaper message boards have to do with "free speech?"

Seriously. You are a rpivate publication. If you tell people before they comment they are open to editing, what's the issue.

Also, local paper up here really tightened up its boards, because things got really ugly on several levels.

 

[sporting_guista]

Make the readers have to register to be able to post comments, and post real names with said comments. That will discourage most idiots. It's the anonymity that idiots crave. And make the registration process onerous; collect lots of marketing information, creating, in-turn, feature-rich lists of subscribers that you can sell to spamm-- er, advertisers so they can direct sell to those lists.

 

[playthrough]

Make readers register names and a credit card -- then charge for comments. Like a nickel, dime, something tiny for each. But the regular idiots who pollute the comment pages, they're gonna pay real dollars after a while. Call it a troll tax. Paid subscribers get to comment for free, because I'd bet those are the (mostly) rational commenters.

 

[Fredrick]

Make the readers have to register to be able to post comments, and post real names with said comments. That will discourage most idiots. It's the anonymity that idiots crave. And make the registration process onerous; collect lots of marketing information, creating, in-turn, feature-rich lists of subscribers that you can sell to spamm-- er, advertisers so they can direct sell to those lists.

Excellent suggestion that will get laughed at in the 10 a.m. meeting. The higher ups who believe in the Internet wants clicks. They welcome all comments. If they are racist and/or sexist, they simply do not care. No way they will make it difficult on these people to make posts.

 

[GlenQuagmire]

Never liked the idea of anonymous comments. The lack of accountability usually leads to abuse and spoils it for everyone else. Most of the comments at my shop are from local u and state u fans bashing each other. Tends to get ugly - and personal - pretty quickly. Very rarely does anything positive come from any comments.

 

[BillyT]

Never liked the idea of anonymous comments. The lack of accountability usually leads to abuse and spoils it for everyone else. Most of the comments at my shop are from local u and state u fans bashing each other. Tends to get ugly - and personal - pretty quickly. Very rarely does anything positive come from any comments.

Glen: Our local paper actually pulls out four or so and uses them on the op-ed page with only the screen name as attribution. I believe this was done even before registration was required.

You always call to confirm a letter to the editor, but you let these go? I never understood it.

 

[Ace]

Make the readers have to register to be able to post comments, and post real names with said comments. That will discourage most idiots. It's the anonymity that idiots crave. And make the registration process onerous; collect lots of marketing information, creating, in-turn, feature-rich lists of subscribers that you can sell to spamm-- er, advertisers so they can direct sell to those lists.

Excellent suggestion that will get laughed at in the 10 a.m. meeting. The higher ups who believe in the Internet wants clicks. They welcome all comments. If they are racist and/or sexist, they simply do not care. No way they will make it difficult on these people to make posts.

Freddie,

Where do you get these crazy ideas on managment? They aren't even in yet at 10 a.m. for a meeting. C'mon.

 

[SF_Express]

Make the readers have to register to be able to post comments, and post real names with said comments. That will discourage most idiots. It's the anonymity that idiots crave. And make the registration process onerous; collect lots of marketing information, creating, in-turn, feature-rich lists of subscribers that you can sell to spamm-- er, advertisers so they can direct sell to those lists.

Excellent suggestion that will get laughed at in the 10 a.m. meeting. The higher ups who believe in the Internet wants clicks. They welcome all comments. If they are racist and/or sexist, they simply do not care. No way they will make it difficult on these people to make posts.

This thinking is so old, it wasn't even important in this decade.

"Clicks" on comment boards don't translate into anything, Fredrick.

I'm pretty low-key here, but this deal where you take basically any thread here and turn it on its head to bash middle and upper management is really, really tiresome.

 

[sporting_guista]

Make the readers have to register to be able to post comments, and post real names with said comments. That will discourage most idiots. It's the anonymity that idiots crave. And make the registration process onerous; collect lots of marketing information, creating, in-turn, feature-rich lists of subscribers that you can sell to spamm-- er, advertisers so they can direct sell to those lists.

Excellent suggestion that will get laughed at in the 10 a.m. meeting. The higher ups who believe in the Internet wants clicks. They welcome all comments. If they are racist and/or sexist, they simply do not care. No way they will make it difficult on these people to make posts.

This thinking is so old, it wasn't even important in this decade.

"Clicks" on comment boards don't translate into anything, Fredrick.

I'm pretty low-key here, but this deal where you take basically any thread here and turn it on its head to bash middle and upper management is really, really tiresome.

So true. If your management is looking for those kinds of clicks, then they clearly are frighteningly clueless. Ho-hum.

 

[Fredrick]

I'm pretty low-key here, but this deal where you take basically any thread here and turn it on its head to bash middle and upper management is really, really tiresome.

The way I see it is these upper management people are the enemy. They are the ones taking the jobs away from my friends. They are the ones that listened to all the horrible advice given by Internet-only/citizen journalist/slash the print staff people and took these suggestions to the publishers. They are misguided people who do not care about quality work, just saving their own asses/slashing staffs.
If somebody would show me that upper management types are not pretty much the main reason our business has gone to hell, then I'd gladly change my position.

 

[slappy4428]

Make readers register names and a credit card -- then charge for comments. Like a nickel, dime, something tiny for each. But the regular idiots who pollute the comment pages, they're gonna pay real dollars after a while. Call it a troll tax. Paid subscribers get to comment for free, because I'd bet those are the (mostly) rational commenters.

I like that suggestion...

 

[Flash]

Dudes, **** the comments. People are dumb.

The people who post comments are your readers. Figure out a way to embrace them, instead of driving them away by calling them dumb.

The beauty about comments and other internet tools is that they have brought on the age of participation. You have to build the relationship with not just the people you're interviewing, but the people for whom you're writing.

 

[Cadet]

I hate story comments. Read a great piece in Gawker not long ago that, to paraphrase, said "newspapers should not be slumming as blogs."

That said, I recognize they are never going away and must be dealt with. To answer the original question, we don't allow attacks on minors, no matter what the story, so that extends to prep sports. They can talk smack about the team ("Nimrods suck!") but not individual players ("The Nimrod quarterback sucks!"). We'll delete the whole comment, not just the offending part.

 

[Fredrick]

The people who post comments are your readers. Figure out a way to embrace them, instead of driving them away by calling them dumb.

The beauty about comments and other internet tools is that they have brought on the age of participation. You have to build the relationship with not just the people you're interviewing, but the people for whom you're writing.

Flash, with all due respect have you read comments on a consistent basis?
To the vast majority people who have commented on my stories I say ... **** YOU!
Embrace them? Embrace morons who are racist? Who criticize the newspaper I work for?
There is no "beauty about comments" I've read. Participation?
Again ... do you read the ****ing comments?? They are meant to inflame and incite. Again, they are racist.
Now if the person would sign his/her name and we have a reasonable discussion? That's a different story. Anybody who suggests we take comments seriously from people who get to use their little cute nicknames like BigManBobby; JoeJackoff, etc., is an idiot IMO.
These are unsigned comments. My god. There is NO REASON to embrace people who are not forced to sign their name as on the editorial page!!!!
You give me your name? We'll talk.
You sign with some cute nickname and flame? To those "readers" I say again,
"**** YOU!"

Flash I ask you these questions. Please answer:
-- Why would I take seriously a comment from a person who doesn't have to put his real name when my real name is on my story. Especially when said person's comment is rude/mean spirited?
-- What is the value of allowing readers to post anonymously?
-- Why do newspapers allow rude comments from anonymous people on their Websites and make people sign their real name to letters to the editor?

 

[JakeandElwood]

Dudes, **** the comments. People are dumb.

The people who post comments are your readers. Figure out a way to embrace them, instead of driving them away by calling them dumb.

The beauty about comments and other internet tools is that they have brought on the age of participation. You have to build the relationship with not just the people you're interviewing, but the people for whom you're writing.

Oh, I know. I was quite drunk when I posted that, meant for blue font by the way. I'm a big fan of the idea of making someone put his/her real name on a comment. Should cut down on the bull**** bigtime.

 

[Flash]

Dudes, **** the comments. People are dumb.

The people who post comments are your readers. Figure out a way to embrace them, instead of driving them away by calling them dumb.

The beauty about comments and other internet tools is that they have brought on the age of participation. You have to build the relationship with not just the people you're interviewing, but the people for whom you're writing.

Oh, I know. I was quite drunk when I posted that, meant for blue font by the way. I'm a big fan of the idea of making someone put his/her real name on a comment. Should cut down on the bull**** bigtime.

Absolutely ... I belong to a couple of news sites where registration is required and the moderation is done quite well. I see no reason why a newspaper couldn't do the same thing.

Oh wait, yes, I do. The paper would have to hire someone just to moderate.

 

[Peytons place]

What I don't get is why newspapers think this is a good idea. Has allowing anonymous comments on news stories translated into any revenue ever? Has it boosted subscriptions? I've seen no evidence that it benefits the newspaper in any way, and I can't imagine that a lot of readers who may be looking at online newspaper content aren't turned off by these comments and question the credibility and decency of the news organization. It's particularly confusing when I hear that we need to make ourselves more relatable and interesting to a wide group of people regardless of race and gender and then allow every racist and sexist in town an open forum on our Web sites.