

Ask HN: Comments or not (for a magazine website)? - enduser

I am just about to go live with a Django-based website for a travel magazine with ~250,000 circulation. Content is published as it is written to the website, and the magazine is published once per month. From the outset it has been assumed that the site would have comments for every article. Now I am wondering if this is a good idea.<p>What is your experience with comments? Are comments worthwhile? Necessary? Dead?
======
anigbrowl
No, they are neither necessary nor worthwhile. I like Bloomberg's approach of
including contact information for the editors/authors of a news piece, which
provides readers with a channel for feedback without providing a platform for
trolls or people who are too stupid to string a coherent sentence together.

Elitist? yes, somewhat. But the 'comments with everything' approach which has
become associated with Web 2.0 over the last few years has IMO demonstrated
that there is a vast pool of stupid people out there, and a small but
persistent group of troublemakers who enjoy baiting other readers. I don't
know why so many companies - especially in the beleaguered media industry -
have become so tolerant of the cesspool that most comment sections become.
There is nothing more destructive to your brand than linking it to the ranting
of ignorant know-nothings. Even on 'premium' news outlets such as
economist.com, the quality of debate in the commentary section is execrable.

Any time I feel slightly guilty about this elitist attitude of mine, I refer
to this funny-because-it's-true story from the _Onion_ :
[http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/study_38_percent...](http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/study_38_percent_of_people)

Sadly, I know of no serious research that has been undertaken on the signal-
noise ratio of internet comments to content in different social media. So I
can't send you back to your publisher armed with any statistical data to show
that comment functionality will either help or hurt readership - I only have
my own opinion to offer. Although I think 2 way interaction between publishers
and consumers is valuable and can help to build persistent audiences, in my
view the best way to do this is with a heavily moderated forum, in which some
kind of threaded discussion structure makes it easier for readers and editors
to prune unworthy contributions. Anyone running a large website with dynamic
content needs to employ someone just to keep an eye on comments or reader
feedback anyway, if only to be alert to the possibility of people deliberately
taking a public crap in the comments; much better, then, filter and moderate
visitor contributions proactively, rather than after they've polluted the
brand and associated content.

------
GBKS
Completely depends on the content, audience and commenting system. Having
conversation around your content is fantastic. If your audience prefers to
discuss with their own social circles on Facebook, Twitter, etc then having a
commenting system on your site may not do anything for you.

On the other hand, if visitors are encouraged to share their own travel
stories and contribute to the content, then having comments could be of great
value. In this case, it's part of your strategy, which means you'll also need
to dedicate time and energy to make it work.

Having comments for comments sake is not worth it. I'd add some options to
share content via other social sites/services instead.

------
jstraszheim
There is something self-referential about this post, but I can't quite figure
out what.

------
Mz
One question I would ask: How closely can you monitor and moderate it so that
trollish comments and other undesirable crap doesn't bring down the quality?
If the answer is "Not very", then some other means to let users voice their
opinions/interact with the site is probably better. Moderating is very time
consuming and if it is done badly it alienates users, probably more than not
having a comment system would.

------
steveklabnik
I personally took comments off of my blog. It seems like news aggregators are
a better place for commenting.

