Media Consultant: Comments Are Bad, Please Shut Up
from the that's-not-strategy,-that's-being-a-curmudgeon dept
As newspapers have struggled to get the online world, most of them did the simplest thing of all, which was toss up some comment forms at the end of their articles. However, they never did anything to actually engage with commenters. Instead, they looked at the comment form as being a community, but never gave any incentives for the folks in the comments to do anything intelligent. They didn't tend to the community or have the authors of the articles respond to comments (in some cases they specifically barred it!). So if you treat your comments as a place where the riffraff is just going to say stupid stuff, don't be surprised when that's what happens.But, it seems that some are getting the wrong message from this. Douglas Bailey, who apparently is a "media consultant" or a "media strategist" has simply determined that all newspaper comments are dumb and should be done away with. Instead, he suggests you write a letter to the editor or an op-ed.
But his reasoning is backwards (and makes me wonder why anyone would hire him as a consultant). First, he gives a few apocryphal stories to make his point -- which isn't exactly compelling since they could be entirely made up. Second, he assumes that because plenty of comments on newspaper sites are dumb the problem is the commenters or the very act of commenting itself. Apparently, it never occurred to him that perhaps the problem is the way the newspapers set up the comments. Those newspapers didn't do anything to try to build up community or to encourage people to post more insightful comments. The problem isn't that the commenters are dumb and pointless, but that the newspaper failed to put in place incentives to encourage smarter comments. The newspapers failed to actually engage with their community and talk with them rather than to them. Any newspaper that wants to hire a media strategist these days should probably find one who looks for ways to help a newspaper better engage their community, rather than one who tells them to ignore the community.
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Filed Under: comments, community, douglas bailey, journalism, media, newspapers
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First of all who is he to decide what constitutes a dumb comment. Just because a comment disagrees with him doesn't make it dumb.
Secondly, if you're going to treat your audience, the people you are trying to sell to, as if they're dumb, so much as calling what they say dumb, then you need to adopt a new business model.
"Instead, he suggests you write a letter to the editor or an op-ed. "
You mean so that if you correct their incorrectness they can censor you? Why should they have such authority over our freedom of speech? If their ideas can't compete in the free marketplace of ideas then their ideas should die. Instead of calling comments dumb why not defend their position. If they can't defend their position that's not our faults, it doesn't mean that our comments are dumb, it just means that their indefensible position should die.
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No, there are LOTS of dumb comments in the world. in particular "FIRST", anything in all CAPS, more than one occurrence of "teh", or anything trying to get other readers to go look at pr0n.
Also commentators that complain about something missing that was clearly in the article itself
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Talk about old fashioned
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Re: Talk about old fashioned
Jeez I can't believe you didn't know that.
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That's one way to reduce the time wasted on lame comments. Moderating for language is another tool.
The harder challenge is to encourage the smarter discourse to occur. However, it is practically impossible to encourage intelligent discourse if you haven't done some prerequisite limitation of asinine comments. Mike's idea of actually having the author participate is a good way to make the discussion worthwhile for homo sapiens.
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I think the Techdirt comments section proves you wrong. Sure, we get comments from shills, idiots, newbies, and the masters of the straw man argument and the ad hominem attack, but for the most part there is some very intelligent discourse here.
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Re: Hulser
Besides, writing a letter to the editor is a flawed process. Most newspapers have 'standards' that they adhere to like: Editing the comment for length; which allows for that same letter to lose it's authenticity and underlying meaning.
"By the way, don’t bother posting any comments directed to me when this article appears on the Web."
Maybe he should have clicked the "Do not allow comments" button. At least it would have provided people a reason to not comment.
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Re: Re: Hulser
Absolutely. I wrote an opinion editorial for the local paper when I was in high school. It got published. However, what got published skewed the whole point of the article I wrote.
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Re: Re: Hulser
Not to mention that most letters to the editor don't get printed, whereas all comments in an unmoderated forum do. Since many/most folks post under some name other than AC, you can either pay specific attention to or skip past many comments based on name, if you wish. Personally, I look forward to reading the comments of the community as much and sometimes more than the article itself. Of particular interest are:
A. When it's a comment war between Mike and Odd Harry (or his new AC moniker), Angry Dudarino, or that one guy that likes to list every affiliation he's ever had and claim he's speaking only for himself.
B. When I've had an idea that I think is on solid ground but want to test via the reaction of the community
C. When I've come up with something that I think is really funny and I want to check that via the reaction of the community.
The point is that, while I've certainly gotten into juvenile discussions on this site, I've also had some truly profound constructive arguments in which I've learned a lot. I value that. If it weren't for the community, I wouldn't be here (sorry Mike, like your style and your work, but it wouldn't be enough for me to visit daily).
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Re: Re: Re: Hulser
I visit this site via the igoogle widget, so if the headline doesn't interest me I won't even click the link. Hence there are times when I've not read an article or made a post for weeks.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Hulser
First time?
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Re: Re: Hulser
I just posted a comment to another article while not logged in. Then I noticed that I wasn't logged in. So I logged in and posted a reply to my first comment so that my nickname would be visible.
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But in seriousalityness, what I was getting at but failed to express is that sites that are ALREADY comment cesspools will have a hard time encouraging the genesis of intelligent discourse until they clean up and have some reasonable percentage of the comments be interesting.
A site like this, which never fell into the "totally garbage" comment club, can carry on so long as a good portion of the comments are decent. Further, author participation helps make it a real discussion.
And shills, so long as they are engaged in debate, are more than welcome. I think the true colors shine through after a few paragraphs, and this allows people to see if either side of a debate is arguing fairly, or if they are full of bluster but little substance.
The idiots and ad hominems and cussfests, I could do without.
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"Fully vetted"? I'm sure this comment would justify his opinion, but Douglas Bailey if a fucking idiot. This asinine statement makes the obvious implication that all readers of comments sections are drooling idiots that can't differentiate opinion from fact. No, Mr. Bailey, we don't believe everything just because "I read it on the Internet." We actually guage whether something is true or not instead of taking everything at face value as you appear to assume we do.
No wonder he doesn't want to hear from readers. He thinks we're so stupid that we'd have nothing to contribute anyway. Better to get "fully vetted" news spoonfed to us from the arbiters of truth.
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It also makes the assumption that HE is more capable of differentiating opinion from fact. WHO IS HE that we should believe any such thing?
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I... kinda agree.
People who actually want to talk, even debate civilly end up going elsewhere, because the negative culture is so firmly entrenched.
I suspect (and my local-columnist friends are evasive when I ask) newspapers like un- or minimally-moderated commenting because the kooks post comments there instead of leaving them weird voicemails. It channels them into a fairly harmless (but public) venue, and all the normal people who want to discuss something in a rational fashion go blog (we have plenty of very lively political/philosophical group blogs). It's kind of a win-win, if you look at it right. I guess.
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Re: I... kinda agree.
Which exactly the point here. If there is no discourse with the original author (and Mike definitely makes his presence known here), or, at the VERY least, a moderation which removes and/or hides trolls, then there is no reason to keep comments intelligent.
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comment moderation must be sophisticated
slashdot probably has one of the better commenting systems around. you've all seen the garbage that comes from unmoderated comments (here), or lightly moderated (digg, youtube). at the same time, moderation only furthers the bias of the community. you can say the most meritorious and factual thing on /. but if it's pro-microsoft, you can expect it to get buried.
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Re: comment moderation must be sophisticated
Yes, there's some rather idiotic discourse that takes place here; even outright arguments. I've even made completely unrelated smart-ass posts, just because i thought it was funny.
However...
Mike posts articles that evoke thought, conversation, and debate. Does he have an agenda? Frankly I don't care if he does or not, because I enjoy reading the articles here. More than that, I really do enjoy reading the comments, even the ones that piss me off, because they get me thinking. Perhaps you should do some of that, yourself, before you "dis" this site. Or better yet, if you don't like this site DON'T FUCKING READ IT.
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wow
How do you get one of these jobs, being highly paid to be ignorant of an industry, and whycome people like us who know what they're talking about can't get them.
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Re: wow
Cuz
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But this actually supports Mike's point. If you don't do anything to help it be otherwise, don't be surprised when your comments section is nothing more than a cesspit. It's like a record company offering to sell the public online music that is delivered via a crappy interface with a tiny selection and laden with debilitating DRM and then turning around and saying "A ha! I told you the public didn't want to buy online music!"
It channels them into a fairly harmless (but public) venue, and all the normal people who want to discuss something in a rational fashion go blog
This may work for the reader, but this model means that the newspapers are allowing someone else to gain value from what could be their community. If you think that comments sections can't be improved, or worse yet, that getting feedback from your users isn't worthwhile in the first place, bloggers and other parties are just going to eat your lunch.
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Letter to the editor: Use some brain cells!
Well, if you think about it, that's exactly what the commentors are doing! The newspapers should scrape those comments for thoughtful insight and post them as "letters to the editor".
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Re: Letter to the editor: Use some brain cells!
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Whaa Whaaa
...it's getting old.
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Re: Whaa Whaaa
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Hard for writters to respond to comments
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Re: Hard for writters to respond to comments
/seriousasm
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Re: Seriousasm
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i just wanted to comment so i could feel meta xoxo
jezebel & gawker have good commenting models.
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duh
Offering minimal incentives will often help create a self regulating community. People build a reputation commenting in a site/forum/whatever they will often reach out to those who act foolish in hopes of being awarded some star by their name or something, or activity level. It isn't hard to build something along those lines...jut look at yahoo answers.
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Fact Check, Aisle 3!
"all newspaper comments are dumb and should be done away with."
Aghast sir! I am simply Aghast that someone classifying my comments on the modern herbal miracle that will make your manhood leave her weeping in joy on the floor as 'Dumb' or anything less that "TOTAL FACTUAL SERIOUS TRUTH, AS HONEST AS YOU WILL BE LONG!!!!!!"
This is truly a dark age of ignorance, and intellectual blight, and I bid you good day!
GOOD DAY, SIRRAH!
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The problem with really getting engaged in a community is getting through the clutter and noise. In a closed environment...a lot of this can be moderated away, or code can be implemented to make it more difficult for troublemakers to persist. It's tedious and feels like wasted energy doing that shit, but some people exist to ruin it for others - and they are the ones who have nothing better to do with their time.
I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.
Who wrote all that? Some old media coot who doesn't make a real effort to build community and engage with it, I bet.
But it wasn't, of course. It was Trent Reznor.
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Just call the masses idiots and your business model is sure to succeed.
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What an odd and misleading comment from you. Trent Reznor is in a very different business. He's not in the business of producing news, and he isn't in a business of building a community to sell to advertisers. I'm not sure what the similarities are.
That said, I agree that his quote was a bit over the top, but again it was quite different than what this guy was saying -- where he was literally telling newspapers to do away with their comments.
Trent's comments (again, not as a business) were about himself personally and how annoyed he was with the way some folks were treating him personally. And so he claimed it was bad... but I'll note that he's actually still using social media. He basically got angry and snapped, but he didn't stop using it.
Besides, he's very much focused on fostering real community on his own site, where he has the ability to influence behavior -- which is the very point I made in this post. The guy in the article was just saying all comments are bad, without suggesting that media sites learn to better cultivate their audience. Reznor was saying that he wants to focus on communities where there is some ability to cultivate good behavior.
Seems in perfect alignment with me.
So what point were you making?
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I had to comment
That is my "stupid comment". I'll shut up now.
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Re: I had to comment
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This idea/invention/business model/whatever you want to call it is not patentable, copyrightable, trademark-able, or in any way subject to intellectual property.
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