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Commenting on the TVUUC attack
Posted By katie allison granju
Knoxville News Sentinel online guru Jack Lail ponders how to handle the most offensive comments that end up on news sites after a tragedy like yesterday’s church shooting.
My publisher sent me several emails over the weekend about complaints about hateful, invective, acidic and just generally mean-spirited reader comments on our newspaper Web sites.
And the comments in question met all those tests - and then some. They had already been removed for the most part after being flagged by users. But one thinks publishers have better ways to spend Saturday nights? Sort of emphasizes the scope of the problem.
While the emails he received were about specific comments, questions are being raised anew about newspaper comments in general, one of the recurring (Oh, not that again) debates on journalism blogs.
Jul 28th, 2008
I think if newspapers have comments sections then they have the same obligation as blogs:
They need to decide on their overall policy. Are comments completely unmoderated (anything goes, so you better be prepared for just that) or are they moderated?
If there is going to be moderation, then the next step is to decide what level of discourse is desireable. If you want to ensure that your commenters are civil, then moderators need to act aggressively against incivil or purely mean-spirited comments. The alternative, as seen on far too many blogs and newspaper comment sections, is that those who know nothing but the ability to hurl insults will stay while those who are looking for a substantive discussion will soon go elsewhere - never to return.
The best way for a moderator to judge is to ask the question: does this comment advance the discussion in any way (or at least not hinder it from moving forward)? As a moderator, I would tend to give the benefit of the doubt in a “grey area,” but there are some comments (and commenters) who are so clearly there for no constructive purpose that the decision to delete is a fairly easy one for the most part.
I will also say that, over time, the moderator’s job actually tends to become easier as the “insulters” quickly move on and the “discussers” stay. Eventually a mature online community will even reach the point that a moderator is no longer necessary as the members of the community will tend to run interlopers “out of town” so to speak in order to maintain their community standards.
Basically, what it boils down is how interested the newspaper is in developing an online community. If that is the ultimate goal, then hiring an impartial, tough-but-fair moderator makes a lot of sense. If it’s just not that important, then what they do or don’t do with comments almost becomes irrelevant.