On Tuesday the editor of three top Maine newspapers (the Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal, and the Waterville Sentinel) announced that they’d no longer include the ability to comment on news stories due to the fact that comments often ranged from “insensitive” to “vicious.” The decision was heralded by many readers who disapproved of the content of comments, but some criticized the move and suggested that it’s valuable for media outlets to collect reactions to a story.

Let’s take a look at a couple of the larger issues at play: the current problems with online discussion systems and the value of providing an outlet for reaction.

The current (and ideal) online commenting atmosphere

The intent behind comment sections on articles and posts is great: engage readers, allow feedback for your work, and build a community. But as readers of popular news sites and media outlets know well, these areas often turn quite vile and, in the end, can detract from the main story. The tone isn’t (entirely) the fault of the news source; it’s largely due to the fact that comment systems aren’t adequate for the kinds of interactions people have online. An ideal discussion system must have a way to implement the concepts of value and reputation.

If an article has five hundred comments, it’s often difficult to find which really add to the conversation. That’s where value comes into play. Users need a way to mark whether a comment adds value to the conversation or whether it detracts from it. (Preferably, there should be an option to flag a comment as inappropriate or offensive as well.) While it’s an important function, it should be very simple for users to “vote” on a comment. You’ve probably actually already seen a commenting system with value built-in: YouTube’s “thumbs up” and “thumbs down.” This also allows YouTube to place the highest-rated comments right underneath the video.

Reputation is a bit trickier; it requires value to be aggregated across all of the contributions from a particular user. eBay is a simple and well-known example of reputation, with users’ scores being a good first indication of trustworthiness. By combining vote totals, both positive and negative, across all of the comments from a particular user, a system could generate a fairly accurate idea of the user’s reputation on the site. Of course, the site would have to decide whether a user’s quantity (number of comments) or quality (value of each comment) weighs more into users’ reputation values. (Cross-site aggregation systems like Disqus could theoretically implement this on a larger level, providing a “global” reputation score for a user.)

It should be noted that the ongoing discussion between using real names and pseudonyms on sites doesn’t really play a part in this system. While real names do lend some degree of credibility, commenters sometimes have valid reasons for posting under a pseudonym (privacy, security, etc.). As long as comments are linked with an individual score, reputation can be calculated either way.¹

Many papers and readers have suggested that moderation is the key to a successful environment for comments. By moderating discussion, though, the site’s readers often cry of censorship. Moderation is an important last resort, but the task of managing comments is best left to the site’s community.

Providing a place for discussion

Allowing comments on a site also provides another benefit: a centralized and somewhat controlled place for reaction to an article. It’s a benefit, no doubt, but I’d argue that a comment section isn’t the only (or the best) way. It’s important to provide a way for people to react, but this could be done through a number of ways:

• A way to provide a URL for a reaction post
• A Twitter feed of tweets that mention the story’s URL in a short link
• The ability to use trackbacks from blog posts about the article

If a site is wary about encouraging discussion on the same page as the original article, a more link-based approach can provide a bit of a compromise.

Comments on the web – especially on media sites – hold a lot of promise, but right now they seem to detract from an article as often as they add to one. Most systems for commenting aren’t at a point where they can handle the complexity of discussion with concepts like value and reputation, both of which encourage users to be good citizens on the site. Hopefully we’ll see more sites implement better systems for commenting as the web evolves, and hopefully the discussion will improve along with them.

¹ Psudonymity and anonymity aren’t the same. I’ve yet to find an example of discussion in which complete anonymity adds any value at all.

UPDATE: I’m happy to see that the Press Herald has re-enabled comments using Automattic’s Intense Debate. I hadn’t seen it used in the past, but it looks as though it’s a robust system that, indeed, incorporates value and reputation. I’m anxious to see how the discussion evolves with the new system in place.

Facebook is going through a bit of a rough patch lately. It was bound to happen at some point; it’s one of the largest public data repositories ever created, and its users have started to question how their data is being used.

For all the data it holds, Facebook has done an amazing job giving unprecedented control over what data users want to share with their friends or with the world. It’s an overwhelming amount of control for most users, though.

Forbes Magazine asked a few well-known designers how they’d choose to rearchitect Facebook’s privacy controls (thanks to Chris Messina for the link). While each designer provided some innovative improvements for advanced controls, I think they all miss the larger point: most users just don’t care about controlling every facet of their information. Most users want simplicity.

Users need to be comfortable while editing their information. Two ways to ease the burden on users would be to create preset privacy levels and to combine profile and privacy editing. Below are some mockups that illustrate these ideas.

Preset privacy levels

The New York Times recently reported that there are over 170 options for privacy in the current Facebook privacy system. That’s an incredible amount of control, and power users love the ability to tweak every possible setting. But what about the casual Facebook user (in other words, the vast majority of people who use the site)? Facebook needs to make privacy as easy as possible.

Facebook instead could change their main privacy screen to show an general selection screen. It would present users with a few different preset levels that would share varying levels of information on the network.

The “See what’s shared” links on each preset level would open a help screen with details about each piece of information.

This general setting would be enough for most users. Unless the user chooses the Advanced option, no other privacy management is necessary within the system.

Combined profile and privacy editing

Facebook needs to show that privacy control is a key part of information management. One way to accomplish this would be to show a privacy tab in the main (newly reworked) profile editing interface.

The Privacy Overview tab would show the level selection screen illustrated in the previous section. In most cases, the level would take care of all privacy management for a user. If he wanted additional control (in other words, if he chose the Advanced privacy level), he would see privacy controls next to each facet of information.

Combining privacy settings with profile editing stresses that the control is important and simplifies management even for power users.

Facebook has an amazing system of rules in place for privacy management, but right now it’s just too complicated for the majority of people. What other ways could Facebook use to simplify privacy management for its users?

The home page over at Bing.com – Microsoft’s newest generation of search – is a huge step forward from past offerings. The page is simple, inviting, and seems to have a better pulse of the current trends on the Web.

It surprised me that Microsoft chose to include a seemingly random image as the background of the page. The image changes daily and includes several hover spots, each of which reveals a fact related to the picture and a link to a suggested relevant search query. Two of these links are duplicated in the footer bar of the page.

It seems to me that the background image of Bing is a huge missed opportunity for Microsoft. Although its designers chose to include popular searches on the home page and even may include posts from Twitter in search results, Bing’s random home page image stops its realtime cred in its tracks.

Instead, Bing should include a background image that is relevant to the news of the day (or at least a relevant holiday). With the amount of media available on the Web, this shouldn’t be a huge task; maybe they could scan the Wikipedia page for the current day to find a relevant event. (Today’s pic could be an archived shot of Endeavour or an early concert image of the Rolling Stones in commemoration of their first show together). I’d give them huge bonus points if they chose a Creative Commons image each day; I hear now they’re even easier to find.