This is an experiment we're launching in response the high demand for information about thespec.com, why we do what we do and our philosophy. It's also a place to bring problems to our attention, where you'll know they are being noticed and acted upon. And you can leave your suggestions here as well.I will try to update and respond to issues as they come up, but that might not be immediate based on the demand and my other responsibilities. And so, we begin.
-- Some users didn't see our commenting guidelines posted prominently a few days back. I'll post them here in a separate entry and re-post from time to time as people need reminding.
-- Others wonder why we delete comments and users. Read the guidelines to understand that.
-- Some users who have been deleted for swearing complain they were not swearing because they used ### or *** or xx or -- to break up their vulgarity. That doesn't work. Just avoid swearing save the occasional hell and damn and we won't have a problem. Hiding behind ## doesn't cut it.
-- The problems we've been having trying to clean up commenting are not unique. The editor of one paper wrote this recently:
'Like many newspapers, we had high hopes when we first allowed readers to comment on stories on our website.
We introduced the feature three years ago. At the time, I wrote about the potential. Never in our community’s history had people of different backgrounds, beliefs and interests been able to have these kinds of conversations about developments and issues.
It hasn’t worked out as well as we hoped.
Yes, the comments are popular. We get about 10,000 a month. And yes, they bring traffic to gazettextra.com and allow people to interact. We tally about 4 million pageviews a month on our site, and many are related to comments.
The nastiness, however, is too much.
We’re not the only newspaper struggling with the issue. Papers around the country are assessing comments and implementing or looking for ways to make conversations on their websites more civil.
Starting today, the Gazette is taking a step that we hope will at least partly address the issue. It won’t solve the problems, but we think it will cut down on the ugliness.
We no longer allow comments on stories that involve crimes, courts, accidents, race or sex.
We and other papers identified those topics as the most troublesome. The comments typically start out OK, but they deteriorate into insults, innuendo or otherwise offensive remarks.
Those of us who monitor conversations on gazettextra have found ourselves consistently removing comments from such discussions and ultimately disabling threads. People simply can’t or won’t behave.'
Here's a link to the full story:
http://gazettextra.com/weblogs/editor/2010/nov/07/comments-eliminated-on-some-types-of-stories/
We are not planning anything like this at this time, but it does demonstrate how serious commenting problems can become if not managed appropriately.
Thanks for looking in. Check back again, and leave a comment if you're so inclined.
Recent Comments