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The commentariat
Posted By katie allison granju
An interesting piece in Politico this week about the ways different publications, sites and bloggers handle comments.
Not surprisingly, there are those bloggers and administrators who have simply tired of the struggle and done away with comments altogether. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder is one, having gotten rid of his comment section, reinstated it and then finally excised it for good.
“I don’t get comfortable censoring speech, even if it is offensive, and there is no need for me to subject myself to those decisions,” Ambinder says.
The ever-increasing volume of comments has had a vaguely anesthetizing effect for readers and writers, newbies and veterans alike.
“I’m not sure what good hundreds of thousands of comments or message boards do for anybody,” says Artley. “I have never known anybody to just read through all of that and think it’s worth revisiting. It’s our job as editors to find a better solution.”
Layne, though, isn’t sure news outlets will keep giving them a forum to talk to one another: “I think it will become a crazy memory that a paper like The New York Times was letting any dingbat come in and write [almost] anything on its website.”
I think both folks have it all wrong.
Interactivity is what online journalism - what today’s journalism - is all about. The problem is that no one is really investing the resources necessary to offer real community moderation for sites, thus you get too much of the crazy, worthless stuff and not enough of the good stuff.
There will come a day when newspapers and other major online publications/news sites will recognize that smart community moderation is a specific job skill, requiring knowledge and training.. You have to hire someone with the skills - or a number of someones - and actually pay them to do that specific job. It shouldn’t be an extra job responsibility tacked on to somebody else’s job.
Jul 24th, 2008
“…smart community moderation is a specific job skill, requiring knowledge and training.”
Yes. It also requires more than being “smart.” If you were really gonna be a star in this kind of job, you’d also have a huge amount of emotional intelligence. And my own theory is that it’d have to be deep and real.
I wonder if it can be obtained, or if it can only be enhanced.
Of course, some people might say it doesn’t matter. What do you think? (lqtm)
I totally agree.