But, thankfully, Ingram has recapped it.
I think the reliance on persistent identity from technologies such as Facebook Connect and OpenID could render the debate moot, but neither “real names” nor “quasi-verified identity” will solve the problem of racist, sexist and just plain hateful speech in Web site comments from the likes of comment trolls as in the drawing on the right. Some people just think that way. And here’s a news jolter: Not everyone is nice.
It would be wonderful if all comments were erudite, thoughtful commentaries on the issues, but forget it, it’s not going to happen. It wouldn’t reflect your community anyway.
Putting resources to comment management is one of the keys to keeping the conversations in bounds. The power of reputation is another. Raising the value of reputation can come through “real names,” persistent identity or by merely making the user’s profile more important on a site.
I’ve been collecting links on Delicious about Web site, particularly newspaper Web site, comments for at least a year as part of the APME Online Credibility Roundtable the Knoxville News Sentinel held. A Webinar at Poynter’s NewsU. continued the discussion.
Update: Steve Buttry joins the conversation and Steve Yelvington has a take.
Here’s the most ones I’ve tagged (if there are others that should be on this list, please let me know):
- Anonymous Comments: Are They Good or Evil?
- Story Lab – Blowback: Do comments scare off sources?
- Story comments show their potential | The Upfront Page | knoxnews.com
- Ill. newspaper suspends Web comments – UPI.com
- Comments by Billie : knoxnews.com Accounts : Knoxville News Sentinel: Local Knoxville, Tennessee News Delivered Throughout the Day.
- Scooping the News: Is self-policing the best way to manage online comments now and in the future?
- New Tools Aid in Policing Web Comments
- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act | Citizen Media Law Project
- Post a vulgar comment while you’re at work, lose your job | The Editors’ Desk | STLtoday
- Local view: Let’s raise our standards on anonymous postings | Duluth News Tribune | Duluth, Minnesota
- Online Comments: Civic Engagement At Its Best—Or Worst? : Features : Metro Pulse
- Nieman Reports | Ethical Values and Quality Control in the Digital Era
- Updating comments on running stories by andydickinson.net
- Reporters: How to respond to comments | patrickbeeson.com
- Newspapers get the kind of communities they deserve » Nieman Journalism Lab
- Chicago Tribune Mary Schmich column: Online commentary rules change is overdue
- Forum addresses journalism’s comment conundrum | Twin Cities Daily Planet | Minneapolis – St. Paul
- Plain Dealer wants comments — without the side order of bile | cleveland.com Updates – cleveland.com
- Reporters: How to respond to comments | patrickbeeson.com
- Your comment engine pet peeves – Wired Journalists
- WRAL.com :: Coming up: On the Record: Is civility disappearing in the U.S.?
- Twitter / yelvington: When citing precedent in a …
- Police ready to ‘take on’ commenters, chief says
- Seven keys to building healthy online community | yelvington.com
- Troll Alert: A survey of commenting policies on news Web sites | CoPress
- Ombudsman Blog – Delay In Removing An Insulting Comment
- Chinese Government Closes In On Anonymous Commenters – China – Gawker
- Housekeeping note – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com
- News Websites in Texas and Kentucky Invoke Shield Laws for Online Commenters | Citizen Media Law Project
- Got a comment? Keep it to yourself – The Boston Globe
- Professor Tries To Get Info On Newspaper Commenters | Techdirt
- The Medium – Comment Is King – NYTimes.com
- Newspapers try to maintain civil, intelligent conversations with readers — chicagotribune.com
- Doug Feaver – Listening to the Dot-Comments – washingtonpost.com
- Gannett newsman disagrees with ex-WPer on anonymous comments
- What Type of Web Commenter Are You?
- Poynter Online – Forums
- Poynter Online – Dialogue or Diatribe?
- Throw the bums out | yelvington.com
- Editors explore issues surrounding Community Conversation; ‘We want to reinforce importance of engaging people in a dialogue,’ says Carroll(March 15, 2007)
- Legal Watch: Letter-to-the-editor libel verdict highlights legal distinction for online comments (May 10, 2007)
- Poynter Online – Dialogue or Diatribe?
I think one important aspect of this debate is that anonymous comments are good for business.
How doea a newspaper generate online page views? Controversy. And nothing does that better than a good old anonymous pissing match.
Why haven’t newspapers insisted on the same rigorous identification standards as print letters to the editor? They can explain away how our country was founded on the anonymous treatises of B Franklin and others but the fact is the press has applied their standards inconsistely because they fear the anonymous comments (and the page views they generate) will go elsewhere if outlawed online. True?
Thanks for the thought-provoking post as always, Jack!
Thanks for your comment.
The short answer is Web site operators don’t have the same legal liability in online comments as print publishers have with printed letters to the editors.
Yes, I believe comments increase the “stickiness” and time on site and a sense of community that articles alone can’t achieve. Anecdotally, I often hear people say the comments were better than the story (maybe in an entertaining if not enlightening way).
But basically, I don’t view comments as “letters to the editor.” I often find them more akin to callers on talk radio, where people are identified as “Jim” or “caller from Knoxville.” (If you applied the “same rigorous identification standards” to radio call-in shows, they wouldn’t have any callers.) The dynamics of online story comments are similar to what happens in forums and fairly open mailing lists.
They are, I think, a participatory experience unique to the online medium and whose benefits outweigh its negatives. That said, we’re still grappling with ways to minimize the negatives without stifling the speech.
Do we have story comments merely to generate additional page views? Maybe, but I suspect the cost of managing comments negates nearly all of the additional revenue. A page view on a news story is worth at best just a couple cents.
As Google’s economist Hal Varian recently said: “The fact of the matter is that newspapers have never made much money from news,”