Most news web sites don't allow readers to post comments directly on articles. That's a mistake. It's a largely untapped way to get the reader to be an active participant and to hold authors directly accountable for their words.
In response to a query to an Online News Association discussion group this week, I posted the following thoughts enabling reader comments:
The GetLocalNews.com sites have forums attached to all articles, and the sites allow readers to create threads independent of articles. We do see discussions deteriorate, a price we pay because we wanted to allow people to comment anytime anywhere.
The suggestions that Ken Sands and Robert Niles offer -- closing discussions after a finite period of time or being selective about which articles allow comments -- are worth considering if you want more control over the dialogue.
We've tried different methods of moderation. Currently, we use a system that allows people to click a "report abuse" button on any post that's not appropriate. If a message gets two abuse reports, it is removed. It's not a perfect system, but it certainly helps.
As for whether or not to allow comments on articles: That functionality was one of the first things we implemented at GetLocalNews, which started with two staffed pilot sites and today operates as a citizen journalism network.
Allowing comments on all articles has a couple critical benefits:
- It engages the readers, giving them a sense of ownership because their words appear prominently. It's not ownership in the sense of a wiki, but it's close to it.
- It holds the author directly and immediately accountable for what's published. If an author gets something wrong in an article, he or she hears about it right away. Readers also give positive feedback, and they suggest ideas for angles the writer may not have considered.
Side benefit:
When people are regularly adding their posts to articles, readers have an incentive to return to that article over and over to see the latest comments. Builds traffic.
For each article, our sites display the first four comments on the article page and then link to our discussion board for any additional commnents.
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