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.
