
Editor’s note: Reader comments in the age of social media - minimaxir
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/11/07/editors-note-reader-comments-in-the-age-of-social-media/
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imgabe
Comments on major news sites are horrendous. They tend to be either
astroturfers, trolls, or people trying in vain to talk sense to one of the
above. Good riddance.

~~~
jonnathanson
Really depends on the community. Comments sections generally work if the
readership has something uniting it: a common topical interest; socioeconomic
demography; regularity; intra-group reputations (and cognizance thereof); etc.
Commenters actually put in some effort when they feel they have skin in the
game, and when they believe they're going to encounter the same peer-
commenters on a regular basis.

This was a lot more possible years back, before the rise of social sharing and
syndication. Your typical comments section on any given blog -- especially
interest-based or topic-based blogs -- could be reasonably intelligent and
informative. This is one of the big tradeoffs we've made, inadvertently, by
making sharing and distribution so much easier.

In the present day, audiences are much more heterogeneous, having come across
any given article through dozens of different channels. They have nothing in
common. They probably have no particular affiliation with, or respect for, the
publication or blog they've stumbled across. Likewise, they don't know,
respect, or care about their fellow commenters. Many don't even see themselves
as commenters on a particular site, so much as drive-by taggers. They don't
expect to stick around, so much as to shout something out and hope people see
it. (Or to astroturf a particular link).

Reuters probably made the right call here. I don't know anybody who regularly
reads Reuters in and of itself. Most of its readership is distributed and ad
hoc, as its articles are widely syndicated across print and the web. That's a
perfect recipe for a terrible comments section.

Note: some people think real identities vs. anonymity plays a big role in
comment quality. I haven't yet seen this to be the case. Some of the smartest
boards, comments sections, etc., are full of users with anonymous handles.
(Though it's key that the handles be permanent, and that the users behind them
feel a sense of identity attached to them). Conversely, I've seen "real
people" make some downright spammy, idiotic, racist, and generally useless
comments on major sites and networks. Identity matters, but it's about more
than the name.

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minimaxir
There's a new design trend that has been popular on news websites such as The
Verge and FiveThirtyEight: the comments section is _hidden_ , and you
explicitly have to click "open comments" for them to appear.

The motivation for this trend is to _hide_ the comments, as blog comment
sections tend to be of low value for controversial stories, despite algorithms
that can correct for low value comments (e.g. upvoting/downvoting). The fact
that Reuters is removing comments from news stories _completely_ indicates
that Reuters is lazy and doesn't want to deal with negative comments at all or
find a more practical solution for user interaction. Note that the Reuters
Facebook page has just as many _if not more_ low-quality comments. (example:
[https://www.facebook.com/Reuters/posts/837804776239880](https://www.facebook.com/Reuters/posts/837804776239880))

The "everyone is talking about it on social media anyways" rationale is a
terrible excuse.

NB/Disclosure: I received most of my internet fame/infamy through my comments
in the comments section on TechCrunch articles.

~~~
snowwrestler
Lazy? No way. They are right. Comments on news stories never added anything,
and publishers only provided comment sections because they thought they
"should."

It provided a veneer of user engagement, but how often did reporters or
editors participate in comments? How often did reporters change their
reporting based on comments? How often did they credit comments in their
reporting?

Newspaper comments have been a ghetto for years.

BTW, the same criticisms apply to the comments of most newspaper Facebook
pages. Facebook for most publishers is simply a distribution channel--post
your stories to your page, hope EdgeRank pushes them into enough user news
feeds, and then wait for the traffic to land back on your site. The comments
don't matter at all.

The real conversation happens on Facebook when users share the news content--
either by re-sharing what Reuters posts, or by sharing it themselves from the
website. Then they talk about it with their friends. That's what Reuters is
referring to when they say that the best discussion is now in social media.
And they are right.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Comments on news stories never added anything, and publishers only provided
> comment sections because they thought they "should."_

Many news sites do include comment sections on purpose, and from what I heard
sometimes even seed them with controversial statements, because they're an
excellent way to drive pageviews, and through them, ad money.

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jsmthrowaway
The comments on the post really drive the point home, don't they?

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programminggeek
Discussions can be great, but I'm not sure that putting an article and a forum
together (which is what most blogs tend to do) is a wise thing.

Think of it in the context of say someone giving a speech or presentation. In
many cases the comments act like someone yelling "YOU SUCK!" in the middle or
end of a speech. People tend not to do that in real life, but online the rules
are different I guess.

There are so many places to leave comments, I just don't know that every
article needs a comments section. The negative side of blog comments usually
outweighs the positives. Leave commenting to more dedicated communities like
HN, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.

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barbudorojo
There are some useful discussion about online comments on
[http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/](http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/)

Online comments a view from the trenches (Podcast, 30 min) Online comments a
wicked problem (Podcast, 30 min)

Both podcast, try to frame the problems, suggest some possible solutions and
estimate the costs associated with dealing with online comments. I think they
give a useful perspective from a multitude of points of view (also I use it to
learn English).

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Off topic. Hey! Thanks for mentioning Radio National. I'm Australian (3rd
generation) and feel an immense sense of pride that our tax-payer funded
Australian Broadcasting Corporation produces what I consider some of the
highest quality radio shows / podcasts I know of. Definitely worth a look.

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acjohnson55
I was one of the developers of Huffington Post's homegrown comment system
before the decision was made to shut it down early this year. It was a
decision that wasn't taken lightly, as "social news" was how the site began
(rather presciently), and there was still a very real online community for
whom our comments section was really meaningful.

We looked at many ways to preserve it, such as real names, interface
innovations, better algorithms for surfacing the best comments,
personalization features, and so forth. At the end of the day, it just didn't
make business sense to keep it going. Along with all of the positive
discussion that went on in the forums, there was also _a lot_ of negativity
that frankly didn't jive with the editorial voice of the site. And it's
surprisingly expensive it is to run a homegrown comment system of that size.

It was sad to see the comments go, as an avid commenter myself and as someone
who had put a lot of energy into developing the software. But I came to
realize that there's no fundamental logical reason a company that specializes
in content production should also provide a forum for commentary. This is
especially so with the rise of social networks and news aggregators. Maybe one
day, a content producer will find a way to make comments a part of their core
business, but until then, a lot of firms are coming to the same conclusion.

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danso
Based on Reuters's past technological problems with the Web, I'd have to say
this is more based on inability rather than principle.

Example: the Reuters Next project, a redesign that took several years before
they abruptly killed it because of being unable "to meet delivery deadlines
and stay within its budget":

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/why-reuters-
ditched-i...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/why-reuters-ditched-its-
big-web-push)

Among the revelations of that fiasco was that Reuters Next was necessitated
out of a failure to iterate on their web platform, such that _" even putting
in a hyperlink, one Reuters source said, was “a very complex issue.” Reuters
had to put its blogs and opinion columns on a Wordpress platform so they could
easily link to outside sources and embed videos."_

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codva
I just have a dorky personal blog, but the comments moved from the blog to
Facebook on their own. I didn't do anything different, but my friends sort of
decided they preferred to discuss the blog posts on Facebook. I didn't see any
reason to fight it. It's not like I have ad revenue on the line.

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gobengo
IMO a question all blogs and media sites need to ask is kind of like: "Am I
creating a community or a television channel?"

I grew up on the web, and the multi-directionality of it as a medium
(including blog comments) has set my standards for the way I want to consume
information (and interact with it). I don't trust information flowing to me
that can't be annotated, corrected, and augmented by the wisdom of the crowd
it's reaching.

It's Reuters' perogative to do this, but I think it just makes Reuters.com
exactly like Reuters TV, it gives them a lot more control, but they're leaving
a lot of opportunity on the table. That's usually what I expect from $30b
companies though.

I look forward to having plenty of interactive communities to learn the same
stuff on for the rest of humanity, even if Reuters is no longer one of them.

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GhostCursor
Yahoo did this first. They weren't keen on the peanut gallery making
inappropriate comments on serious articles.

I have a peanut gallery, I mean Comments button on my website for my mobile
apps. It sends me an email and sits in a moderation bin. They are always
support oriented so it works out great. This way spam is also directed to my
email instead of the website.

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mytochar
This is probably a dumb question; but, does this mean they're going to
facilitate some easy way to find where the comment stream will be for their
articles? For example, will technology be written to find out if an article
has been posted on Reddit and automatically have a link to the Reddit
discussion around it?

I would find this useful, possibly.

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lomocotive
There should be an aggregation of the best high quality public comments
gathered across social media per article instead.

~~~
prawn
Could, definitely. Like Letters to the Editor, but immediate and topical. But
requires moderation and thus legal ownership.

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TravelTechGuy
I wonder if this will start a trend, where major sites will stop
accepting/editing/suffering comments, and will just push their headache to
Facebook. RIP comments 1994-2014.

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6stringmerc
With so many people out of work in the United States, it strikes me as
selfishly ignorant to simply can the comments section instead of 1) using an
industry standard platform, 2) moderating that platform, and 3) cultivating a
culture of utility.

I don't call this move "smart" in the grand sense. I'd go with "lazy" and/or
"cheap" in this context. I mean, ask me how I know Disqus has the ability to
ban users from specific sites...

~~~
davis_m
You really think Reuters should ignore the fact that their comment sections
are essentially worthless just to create busy work for maybe one person?

