When it comes to monitoring user comments on various news websites, there is a fine line in place. On one hand, nobody wants to impede free speech but on the other nobody wants to see comments and readers leave the page due to racist, bigoted or downright rotten comments left by ignorant individuals. But what can we do to curb the issue? I have a few solutions
Comment pages often create a false sense of confidence for people who have strong opinions that can be offensive to others whether they know it or not. Comment pages that allow the users to remain anonymous would likely be problematic in terms of eliminating commenters aiming to fight with others. The first step to eliminating the riffraff from commenting is to force all users to create an account. The account should be free but people looking to cause problems will leave. They do not want to waste time signing up for an account when all they want to do is cause trouble in the first place.
It wouldn’t be fair to simply ban individuals whom we don’t agree with or the same folks that choose to troll and cause problems on news websites. Not it only would it not be fair but it violates every Americans’ right to free speech which goes against everything we stand for as journalists. But that doesn’t mean vulgarity and indecency should be permitted. A ban system that kicks in after three strikes could be a viable solution. Any commenter who leaves comments that are racist, vulgar, offensive or what have you will be given three strikes and notified after each strike has been issued. After the third strike the user will be banned from further commenting on any public message board. New users will be notified of the ban system when they first register.
Bloggers and reporters should be held responsible for monitoring user comments. Not only does it seem to benefit the direction of conversation on a number of topics of public interest but it also creates possible news stories and angles the reporter or blogger had not originally imagined.
According to the blog written by Patrick Thornton, it sounds like most of the suggestions he’s compiled to deter nasty user comments would work well to put off problematic consumers. I especially like the idea of “hoisting” comments. Not only does this method seem to promote more dialogue among users but it also makes it so users don’t have to scroll down far to find quality posts to comment on. Thornton also suggests encouraging advice from users and compiling the best ones on a separate blog post. This method is essentially crowdsourcing but I think it could still be a powerful tool for journalists. It gives users an opportunity to tell reporters and journalists the stories and information they want.
The greatest advantage of all the tips provided is they are simple and free. But more importantly keeping blog and story comments civil could be a rather powerful weapon for online news organizations in the future. If the comments are civil, intelligent and thoughtful, readers who might not have wanted to comment in the past may begin to provide input. In turn this will develop a stronger readership and more readers will be open to providing comments. User generated comments could also provide more traffic to the news site. Comment civility is a win-win for both the readers and the news organization.
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