Comments on: Why commenting on news sites still stinks: Further notes on the commenting survey results

By: Kiyoshi Martinez

Kiyoshi Martinez — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:12:41 +0000

I’m glad you’re thinking about this! I gave this some thought a while back and I agree that’s it’s mostly a human problem with human solutions. Actually, not so much a problem, but the need for the realization to be that comments isn’t just as simple as letting people respond: it’s an act of community building.

I wrote out my full thoughts on the subject last year, you can check out the blog post here:

Comments: Taking a closer look at identity and filtering in online journalism

By: Interesting stuff I saw online, Jan. 10 to Jan. 13 | STL Social Media Guy

Interesting stuff I saw online, Jan. 10 to Jan. 13 | STL Social Media Guy — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:01:44 +0000

[...] Why commenting on news sites still stinks: Further notes on the commenting survey results – Amen, brother: "if there’s not a journalist managing the community — participating in threads, asking and answering questions, and generally continuing the conversation — your comment threads will stay a mudpit, all technology, identity, and registration aside." [...]

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:37:19 +0000

Megan makes a good point. Unless journalists have some sense of responsibility for discussions around their own work, they won’t properly engage with the audience.

By: Megan Taylor

Megan Taylor — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:58:00 +0000

Make individual journalists responsible for the comments on THEIR stories. This way there is a guiding voice that is familiar with what’s being discussed.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:35:51 +0000

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

@Dave – Absolutely – If we can get across to reporters and editors that comments can have reporting value, we’ve scored a big win.

@John – Perfection can’t be the goal, but the number of respondents in that little survey who said their news story comments sucked was just too big to ignore. We certainly can’t control reader’s behavior, but we can get into those threads and point conversations in the right direction, or at least we can try, right?

@Kat – Sounds like a few hundred newsrooms I know. Well, the “rotate” idea takes a hit there, and if you have an active community, it’s going to be more difficult to keep it on track, but I’ve gotta recommend just making it a part of your daily routine just like everything else you’re doing online. You’ll get as much out of it as you put into it.

@Matt – So why isn’t the reporter or an editor in the comment threads on news stories seen as an authority figure? Do systems that ID the admin in the thread (like the different color background on this very comment) help?

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:21:09 +0000

I think news article comments are going to continue to suck until a few fairly significant things change in the practice of journalism online. This is a systemic problem. Adhering to best practices can only mildly optimize a sucky experience.

Truly good comments require a stable community. That is why it is near-impossible to form a stable community in the comments on ephemeral news articles. That’s also why it’s easy to form communities around bloggers. Bloggers tend to have persistent topical focuses, and they feature a compelling authority figure to set the tone and discourage a few voices from taking over.

You can form communities around general-interest links; just look at MetaFilter or Digg. But the best way to do that is by scaling the community as it grows – starting with a community leader and small traffic, and building up to a network of community leaders by the time you have Digg-level traffic.

I think only two things will help us find how you can create great communities around the news: 1) a shift away from individual stories and towards stable topics, where comments are integrated on every topic as a sort of message board; 2) a commitment to investing the personnel and time required up front to form a good community.

By: Kat Powers

Kat Powers — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:09:25 +0000

And what if your newsroom is 1-2 people?

By: John C. Cotey

John C. Cotey — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:23:28 +0000

Comments will never ever EVER be perfect. We’ve added registration to a few of our blogs that had gotten out of control, and comments dropped by like 500 percent. Not sure if that’s exactly what we wanted, but as time passes the number is rising slowly and the posts are a little cleaner. Still about 70 percent good, 30 percent acceptable mud, but you still only taste the mud.

By: Dave Mastio

Dave Mastio — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:28:57 +0000

I think another way to get newsrooms to engge with the comments is to recognize that there are stories there … tips to new stories, bits of useful context etc.

Somebody in leadership in the newsroom should be demonstrating how these can be used and encouraging reporters to do the same thing.

There are even complete stories in the comments. At one paper where I worked, a local lawyer was outed on a local blog for sock puppetry in attacking local judges (as part of a larger judicial appointment controversy). I followed up on the IP information and it turned out she had multiple accounts with us and even commented on a letter to the editor written by her secretary that just happened to echo points she had made under assumed names elsewhere raising the question of whether the letter to the editor was fake. What a lovely cesspool.