On Posts, Comments and Moderation
May 13th, 2008Here is a really insightful piece about how newspapers should handle reader comments and discussion boards — particularly for sensitive stories.
It’s not a piece that comes with any answers, but it certainly brings up mainly salient points: how do you deal with comments when a child has been killed, how do you make sure you aren’t posting factually irrelevant information and how do you verify people are who they say they are.
The problem I have (not with the piece, but with the idea of moderating comments) is that the decision to moderate discussions is oftentimes made without a complete understanding of the options.
Although to the credit of the piece, there are some ideas that are there, appropriately marked as agree by the writer:
other suggestions for moderating online comments included requiring users to confirm their identities with a credit card (impractical — my comment); grouping registered and anonymous posters separately (really? seems confusing); blocking users who submit too much irrelevant ranting (a given, if possible); disabling the comment function on certain stories (I agree); and depending on users to flag other users’ inappropriate comments (again, I agree).





