Bloomberg Latest To Kill Comments Because Really, Who Gives A Damn About Localized User Communities?

from the I-can't-hear-you dept

We've been noting how the trend du jour among news outlets has been to not only kill off your community comments section, but to proudly proclaim you're doing so because you really value conversation. It's of course understandable that many writers and editors don't feel motivated to wade into the often heated comment section to interact with their audience. It's also understandable if a company doesn't want to spend the money to pay someone to moderate comments. But if you do decide to reduce your community's ability to engage, do us all a favor and don't pretend it's because you really adore talking to your audience.

The latest war on comments comes courtesy of the folks over at Bloomberg. You may have noticed that the Bloomberg media empire recently went through a bit of a consolidation and redesign under the leadership of former Verge editor-in-chief Josh Topolsky. Buried among the vertigo-inducing fonts and amusing new 404 warning, is, you'll note, a very obvious lack of user comments. This is, to hear Topolsky tell it, because comments don't actually reflect your community:

"I've looked at the analytics on the commenting community versus overall audience. You’re really talking about less than one percent of the overall audience that’s engaged in commenting, even if it looks like a very active community,” he says. “In the grand scheme of the audience, it doesn't represent the readership."

In other words, because most users can't be bothered to comment, we're going to eliminate a major artery for input for those users who do choose to closely participate with the authors and website. No worry, says Topolsky -- just because Bloomberg no longer gives a damn what you say to its authors regarding individual pieces, that doesn't mean the website isn't listening to its userbase when it comes to quirky color and font schemes:

"Nothing about the new Bloomberg is set in stone; Topolsky says the entire process is iterative, and that includes the comments. The digital team will be monitoring reader behavior across desktop and mobile to see how they’re reacting to and interacting with the new site. For example, on launch day, they experimented with header height so see what readers like better. On mobile, where they’re working to “find the right balance between design and imagery and text,” Topolsky plans to experiment with different formats — more text versus more color versus a grid — to figure out what draws readers in."

While at least Topolsky seems open to the idea of comments returning, he still misses the point: watching analytics to judge responses to design changes isn't the same as actually allowing a conversation with your audience. If you actually do value your readership, you wouldn't be outsourcing their conversations to the feral and intellectually-stunted Facebook mind pool. As some Techdirt regulars have noticed, local comments encourage local community, and despite all the hand-wringing about trolls out of control, studies have recently shown it only takes treating commenters like real people (and a little moderating) to dramatically raise the discourse bar. This is your audience and your community, not a raging cacophony of encroaching cybernetic hyenas in need of a good napalming.

I still think the lowly comment section is getting a bad rap during this latest site redesign phase (led by folks like ReCode and Vox), and it's leading to a continued droll homogenization of not only website design, but of participatory news conversation itself.

Filed Under: comments, community
Companies: bloomberg

Yet Another Website Kills Comments, Despite Study Showing You Can Have Civil Comments If You Give A Damn

from the gags-help-communication dept

There's a trend afoot among some website editors to kill the comment section, then proclaim that they've courageously decided to reduce conversation to help improve conversation. It's a random bit of logic we've noted doesn't make any sense if you're interested in actually fostering a local community, and care about not having all conversation outsourced to Facebook. The pretense that you're killing comments because you're nobly trying to further human communications (and not, say, because your website is cheap and lazy) is also disingenuous. That hasn't stopped ReCode, Reuters, Popular Science, or some newspapers from killing comments in order to push humans to the next evolutionary level (or whatever).

This week, yet another website joined the "comments are evil and have no use" parade. In a now familiar treatise, TheWeek.com announced that while editors "truly do value your opinions," you're no longer going to be allowed to express them on their website. According to TheWeek, this nuclear option was required because comments are just filled with horrible, nasty people:

"There was a time — not so long ago! — when the comments sections of news and opinion sites were not only the best place to host these conversations, they were the only place. That is no longer the case. Too often, the comments sections of news sites are hijacked by a small group of pseudonymous commenters who replace smart, thoughtful dialogue with vitriolic personal insults and rote exchanges of partisan acrimony. This small but outspoken group does a disservice to the many intelligent, open-minded people who seek a fair and respectful exchange of ideas in the comments sections of news sites."

Of course if news outlets spent a few minutes actually moderating the comments section and treating it like a valuable community resource (instead of oh, a drunk uncle with a bad goiter and nasty halitosis at your wedding), that probably wouldn't be as big of a problem.

In fact, it's worth noting that a recent paper published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found that it's not very hard to increase civility in your comment section. In some cases all it took was the writer of the article entering the comment section and treating the people there relatively well, even if they're all busy acting like jackasses:

"One surprisingly easy thing they found that brought civil, relevant comments: the presence of a recognized reporter wading into the comments.

Seventy different political posts were randomly either left to their own wild devices, engaged by an unidentified staffer from the station, or engaged by a prominent political reporter. When the reporter showed up, “incivility decreased by 17 percent and people were 15 percent more likely to use evidence in their comments on the subject matter,” according to the study."

Note by "recognized" the paper just means somebody relatively recognized from the outlet or the reporter themselves. They also tried their very best to actually define "incivility" as a quantifiable metric:

"To develop a list of characteristics that signaled incivility, we drew from past research on the characteristics of uncivil discourse (Papacharissi, 2004; Sobieraj & Berry, 2011). To be coded as uncivil, the comment needed to include one or more of the following attributes: (1) Obscene language / vulgarity (e.g. “A@$#***les”), (2) Insulting language / name calling (e.g. “you idiots”), (3) Ideologically extreme language (e.g. “Liberal potheads”), (4) Stereotyping (e.g. “Deport them illegals”), or (5) An exaggerated argument (e.g. "It’s very easy to solve all of this just keep your legs closed if you don’t want a baby.”). Comments containing any one of these characteristics were coded as uncivil."

Having been a blogger (and a moderator of one of the Internet's larger tech forums) for more than fifteen years, I can anecdotally note that even the biggest jackasses generally do dial back the antisocial angst when you calmly and politely talk to them (whether I've always been able to do that every day without piling on antisocial angst of my own is another discussion). But between actual involvement and reasonable moderation, it's not hard to reclaim a comment section from the encroaching, troll-induced apocalyptic jungle. What websites that close comment sections are doing is telling everyone they don't give quite enough of a shit to work to improve them. Proceeding to proclaim this is just because you really love conversation informs that same community you also think they're kind of stupid.

Filed Under: comments, community, journalism

St. Louis Post Dispatch Declares That Banning Editorial Comments Will 'Elevate The Ferguson Conversation'

from the addition-through-subtraction dept

As we've been noting, there's a growing trend afoot whereby some news websites have started unilaterally declaring the lowly news comment section dead, and therefore have started eliminating the ability for visitors to comment entirely. While it's one thing to just close site comments and be done with it, sites like ReCode, Reuters and Popular Science have been quick to insist that they're killing comments for the good of the "conversation," which sounds so much better than "we closed news comments because we're too cheap and lazy to police bile and spam."

At a time when racial conversation couldn't be more important, the St. Louis Post Dispatch has decided to join the war on comments, this week declaring that the paper would be eliminating comments from paper editorials completely. This is, the paper declares, because it's very much concerned about having a "meaningful discussion":

"We intend to use our opinion pages to help the St. Louis region have a meaningful discussion about race. So we are going to turn off the comments in the editorial section for a while, and see what we learn from it. (Comment will continue on news articles). Comments might return to the opinion pages. Or we might find that without them, the discussion — through letters, social media conversations and online chats, rises to a higher level."

Again, does anything say "we love conversation" quite like restricting conversation? Like ReCode and Reuters, the paper appears to believe that e-mail and social media are good enough substitutes for an open conversation on site -- not understanding that part of building a community involves a cultivating a regular, engaged local readership, and protecting that readership from the angsty dregs of the Internet.

The paper justifies its move by leaning heavily on a recent University of Wisconsin-Madison study (also see this NY Times report) that found news story readers could have their opinions manipulated through completely unmoderated comments (something astroturfing and marketing firms have relied on for ages):

"In their study, published last year, researchers concluded that “Much in the same way that watching uncivil politicians argue on television causes polarization among individuals, impolite and incensed blog comments can polarize online users.” In some cases, negative blog comments actually changed readers’ perception of what they read, not just their opinions about it."

But isn't shifting opinions part of having any conversation, online or off? And is killing the comment section entirely really the way to handle aggressive, trolling, or misleading comments? It still feels like many outlets have just grown tired of managing their own communities, but instead of admitting that they're not invested enough to spend time weeding the troll garden, they've taken to disingenuously claiming they're somehow revolutionizing online conversation -- by making sure there's less of it.

Filed Under: comments, community, ferguson, missouri
Companies: st. louis post dispatch

Reuters, Re/code Care So Very Much About 'Conversation' That They're Asking Commenters To Leave

from the baby-and-the-bathwater dept

A little more than a year ago, Popular Science announced they were shutting of news story comments, stating that comments were "bad for science." Earlier this month Reuters Digital Executive Editor Dan Colarusso also announced that the company would also be eliminating comments from news stories. Comments, Colarusso proclaimed, were no longer necessary thanks to the rise of social media. Reuters still values conversation about the news, he insisted, but the old-fashioned idea of allowing users to directly comment on stories must give way to "new realities of behavior in the marketplace":

"Much of the well-informed and articulate discussion around news, as well as criticism or praise for stories, has moved to social media and online forums. Those communities offer vibrant conversation and, importantly, are self-policed by participants to keep on the fringes those who would abuse the privilege of commenting."

That's a lovely way of saying that Reuters didn't care enough about its readers to pay for moderators. This is the same Reuters that a few years ago threw the baby out with the bathwater when they banned anonymous commenters, ignoring the fact that anonymity isn't synonymous with jackassery, and can often allow people to give valuable insight they might not be comfortable with otherwise.

On the heels of the Reuters announcement the folks over at Re/code this week announced a similar plan, again insisting that social media is a good enough replacement for direct, on-site reader feedback:

"Our writers are all active on services like Twitter and Facebook, and our official Re/code accounts on social media post our stories all day long. Readers aren’t shy about offering their opinions to us on these and other social media services, and you are likelier to be able to interact with us there. In effect, we believe that social media is the new arena for commenting, replacing the old onsite approach that dates back many years."

Should you visit Re/code now, you're informed that your comments are considered so important, you're encouraged to leave:This sudden disdain for traditional comments raises the question: is Facebook somehow immune to stupid comments? Is forcing all news conversation on to Facebook's terms really an improvement in meaningful dialogue? The rush to declare the comment section dead seems to ignore the fact that on-site comments create value by building a sense of local community, something GigaOM's Mathew Ingram recently put rather succinctly:

"The bottom line is that if the discussion and debate and interaction around a news story occurs somewhere else, then soon the readers who are interested in that engagement will start to think of the platform where it occurs as the important part of the relationship — not the site that actually created the content."

Offloading moderation costs to social media websites is of course their prerogative, but I find the pretense that this is about some kind of concern for an evolution in conversation to be disingenuous. It's like a local bar owner saying they value intelligent conversation so much they'd really prefer it if patrons held their conversation at the massive stadium down the street. It's a way to keep your readers -- both the obnoxious ones and those offering interesting insight and corrections -- at arms length. The fact these announcements tend to be dripping with disdain for site readership doesn't generate the impression that participatory feedback is actually welcome.

That's not to say comments aren't frequently a raging cacophony of nitwits, partisan blowhards and spambots when moderated poorly. However, there's a number of older tech communities like Slashdot that have been able to moderate communities and cultivate intelligent conversation for more than a decade on a fraction of the budget of Re/Code and Reuters. Sites like Reddit and Gawker have similarly tinkered with community self-regulation and systems that work to dull the boldest bullhorns in said nitwit cacophony. This sudden trend toward waving your face like a Southern belle at the overwhelming and brutish nature of Internet conversation seems dramatic. We're herding a few jackasses here, not splitting the atom.

Obviously news comments are an ongoing evolution, and it takes a little work to cultivate meaningful conversation. But offloading your Viagra spam and bile-soaked comment section to Facebook because you can't be bothered to hire moderators is a cop out and it's lazy. Pretending you're doing it because you value conversation adds insult to injury. What Popular Science, Reuters and Re/Code are really saying is that they don't care enough about their communities -- or those regulars who do stop by to have intelligent conversation -- to pay somebody to weed the garden.

Filed Under: comments, community, conversation, journalism, social media
Companies: re/code, reuters

This Post Is Not About GamerGate

from the it's-about-ethics-in-journalism dept

1. Okay, let's get this out of the way first: as you'll quickly see, there is no way to write this post without someone accusing us of being hypocritical -- so we're going to just get it out of the way upfront and note that that's absolutely true, as the article we'll be linking to also admits that such hypocrisy is occasionally necessary in reporting. We hope that the reasons for why we're doing this post are clear in the text below, so going hogwild in the comments claiming hypocrisy won't be particularly productive. We know. We get it.
   
   
2. This post really is not about GamerGate. It is really about ethics in journalism (I know, I know). We have no real interest in writing about the whole GamerGate thing at all, because almost none of it is interesting and almost all of it is incredibly, mind-bendingly stupid, no matter what position you're arguing. So, I'm really hoping -- while recognizing this hope will likely not be realized -- that the comments on this post won't actually be about GamerGate or any sort of debate about the merits of one side or the other, but rather about what this article is really about, which is the journalism coverage.

With that out of the way, as noted, we haven't been covering "GamerGate" at all, in part because the whole thing is just kind of ridiculous. There are a lot of wild accusations being thrown around on all sides, and a lot of really bad actions and statements by a lot of people, leading to lots of other wild accusations. Some of the accusations are true, some are not true, many are wildly misleading. But the other reason we haven't been covering it is because it's covered to death everywhere else -- to an almost insane level. And that's what we're talking about today, based on a great article by Jason Koebler over at Vice's Motherboard, noting that so much of the coverage exists because writing something about GamerGate appears to drive a ton of traffic. And in the stupid click-driven world that many publications live off of these days, you do what brings in the traffic (disclaimer: see point 1 at the very top of this post):

The dirty secret here is that, unlike a story about Ebola or Monica Lewinsky or basically anything else anyone writes about, writers and editors can be assured that their GamerGate coverage gets a disproportionate amount of traffic. As far as online journalism gambling goes, it's one of the safer bets you can make.

That's because GamerGate story readership isn't the general public: It's the people who are in the movement itself. For proof of this, look at the fact that the vast majority of GamerGate coverage have hundreds and even thousands of comments—almost all of them from people in the movement.

But it's not just about GamerGate. It's about the way that online news has developed into this traffic-whoring stage, with lots of publications all rushing to cover "the thing that will bring traffic."

Apple announcing an iPhone is news, sure. But Apple announcing an iPhone and breathlessly writing 50 blog posts and a ~live blog~ and an instant analysis and hot takes is when reporting stops being reporting and starts becoming the journalistic equivalent of putting chips on every single number in roulette hoping Reddit or Facebook or someone else picks your story to win that day’s internet traffic lottery.

And, you know, it's not just tech journalism either:

The side effect of this is that the world starts thinking that every time the  House votes to repeal Obamacare or every time Congress holds a hearing about Benghazi or every time John Oliver TOTALLY EVISCERATES someone every time a fringe scientist says climate change isn’t real or every time a normal person or government agency joins Twitter or every time a celebrity gets plastic surgery or every time some internet nerds can rile up a Gawker writer on Twitter is capital-I Important.

They're all attempts to "win the social media lottery" to have a story go "viral" and suddenly have a lot more traffic.

Frankly, this is stupid. And it's something (again, disclaimer above) we mostly try to avoid. There are a few of our regular critics who accuse us of being traffic whores ourselves (and I imagine a few of them may be rushing to comment as such on this article). They claim that we write what we write to get traffic. But here's a dirty little secret for you: if you want a lot of traffic, writing about intellectual property law, free speech, international trade agreements and regulatory capture isn't the best way to get it. We've never covered a big Apple event. While we'll occasionally attend an event, we tend to write about it a day or two later, after we've had a chance to let things sink in. And we try (though we don't always succeed) to provide a different take on things. We add our opinion (or, as the critics explain, we "spin" or report things in a "biased" way). We try to only write about stories that we actually think are interesting (and, even then we only get to about a third of the stories we actually think are interesting).

As a result of that, I hope that the people who read this site tend to be more loyal and actually more interested in what we have to say (and often more willing to join in the discussion and join the larger community). But, that's not how many media publications work today. It's all about the "metrics" -- the number of visitors, and with the social media firehose so big, the focus has been moving aggressively towards that viral lottery. That's not to say we don't keep tabs on our own traffic -- because of course we do. But we know that getting a big story on Reddit means a flood of people who visit for 30 seconds and move on. Our loyal readers are the ones who stick around, and hopefully it's because we're not providing one of fifty different stories about the same damn thing with the same "journalistic" take (i.e., without any color, without any opinion and without any heart). Our position may not be great for advertisers. I've had discussions with potential advertisers, explaining how we have a really loyal community, and most of them don't seem to care. They just want bigger numbers, even if those bigger numbers are meaningless, because the audience doesn't give a shit. I would think that having a loyal, interested and committed community would be a lot more interesting to advertisers, but so many play the same stupid numbers game, and that leads so many publications to do the same.

There are a few publications that have clearly recognized that the hamster wheel chase of rewriting the identical story over and over again while adding nothing new is not worth it. It's been great to see and I've been encouraged by some publications that have really focused on building a loyal audience through doing something different and providing more value. But, for many, it's all about a single metric: traffic. Then it starts to feel a lot less like journalism or something socially valuable. It just feels like... well... a game.

For years, we've talked about how few seem to recognize that real journalism is about the community, not about "the news." I'm hopeful that more people begin to recognize this. And for all the hypocrisy in this post (disclaimer 1), consider part of this hypocritical post to be an attempt to share why we do what we do -- and why we don't do certain other things that we'd consider to be just cynical clickwhoring.

If we want to have a discussion about "ethics in journalism" perhaps it should start with a discussion about all of this.

Filed Under: advertising, clickbait, community, ethics, gamergate, hypocrisy, journalism, traffic

Reporter Annoyed To Discover He Doesn't Own Facts; Suggests 'Global Paywall' For Reporters Like Himself

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Every so often we see this kind of thing: a reporter (who may very well do amazingly good work) gets upset to realize that other news sites and aggregators pick up on some of his stories and write about them -- potentially even getting more attention than the original. In this case, it's reporter Matthew Taub, who is annoyed that other sites got the glory for his investigative reporting on... on a guy dressing up as a clown and running around a Brooklyn cemetary:

A story I did, like this, gets repackaged, like this (with a reference to the original reporting deep in the second page), and finally reaches you, like this:

Hey, we've all been there. I've had plenty of stories that I've written get rewritten and repurposed by other, much bigger sites and then watched those sites get all the traffic. It happens. Of course, sometimes it's happened the other way as well, in which we get traffic that we probably don't deserve after we write about a story that originated elsewhere, but for reasons unknown, the world bestowed the traffic to our story first.

Taub takes the silly line that, because of things like this, "original reporting" (as he defines it) "will cease to exist in about five to ten years." Of course, we've been hearing this refrain for longer than five to ten years and it never really changes. And it's silly and somewhat meaningless. First of all, reporters don't own facts. Period. It's something that's kind of important to learn if you're going to report on stuff. Hell, for the cemetary clown story, is Taub paying the clown? Of course not, but the story really originates with that guy, not Taub, right?

Furthermore, the idea that original reporting will go away is just silly. In fact, if you look at sites that often start out doing the kind of aggregating and rewriting that Taub complains about, many of them also do plenty of original reporting, and that role keeps growing over time as they realize how important that can be. Just look at the prototypical example of a site that got big by "aggregating" information from elsewhere: BuzzFeed. Yet these days, it has a large and growing "original reporting" staff that often does amazing work. Many people don't realize it yet because they're still focused on the other junk the site produces, but the idea that original reporting goes away is just silly.

But Taub thinks the answer is a "global paywall" where all "real" publications can all team up:

Solution: A Global Pay Wall Across All Sites.

All cooperating media outlets agree to the same pay wall appearing on their sites, with revenue divided behind the scenes.

No fear of a loss of eyeballs to competitors: everyone is behind the pay wall.

Except, no. Not everyone is behind the paywall, because any even halfway entrepreneurial journalist will look at Taub's global paywall and leap for joy over the fact that Taub just cleared the field for competition by taking all those papers out of the open internet. And it's not like this idea hasn't been discussed before.

Taub compares his solution to Spotify and iTunes -- but, again, the industry tried to set up an "iTunes for news" five years ago and it hasn't worked out particularly well. It's just been a bunch of paywalls that haven't really helped. Music and news are very different products. Not realizing the difference in how they're consumed (and what the substitutes are) dooms this particular analogy.

But the real problem here is that Taub is overvaluing the reporter and undervaluing the audience. We've tried to make this point for years, but the whole reason that newspaper businesses were viable in the first place was that they brought together a community of attention, and then were able to sell advertisements against that. That "community" was often local. But the problem today is that there are so many competing communities, made possible by the internet, that newspapers no longer have that kind of monopolistic control on attention.

But the problem with a paywall is that it's actually a barrier to building a community. It's limiting the community and providing less value to the community for more money. Consumers of news today want to be able to share it with others and discuss it. And a paywall gets in the way of that. Thus, you're making the news significantly less valuable, yet expecting people to pay more for it and devaluing the community value that the publication itself needs. Economically, it's stupid.

Here's a better idea: if other sites are getting all the traffic for your stories, maybe look at why the traffic is going to them and see what you can do better to get that traffic directly. There's a reason people went to those other sites rather than the original, and maybe instead of just blaming the evils of the open internet, it's because you or your publication could be doing a better job attracting and keeping a community of interest.

Filed Under: aggregation, antitrust, community, global paywall, journalism, matthew taub, paywall, sharing

MakerBot Files For Patent On A Design Derived From Work By Its Community

from the sharing-is-good dept

As Techdirt noted a couple of years ago, patents have been the bane of the 3D printing world, holding it back for years, possibly decades. Now it looks like patents have reared their ugly head again in this world:

In a stunning display of madness, makerbot industries files a patent application on a mechanism clearly derived from content created by their users. What's almost worse is the article they wrote praising the invention, presumably while they were filing the paperwork.

MakerBot is one of the key companies in the low-cost 3D printing market. It was founded in 2009 and based its first model on the completely open RepRap design. However, in 2012, MakerBot moved away from its open source roots, claiming that it needed to make this shift in order to build a long-term business:

We are going to be as open as we possibly can while building a sustainable business. We are going to continue to respect licenses and continue to contribute to the open technology of 3D printing, some of which we initiated. We don't want to abuse the goodwill and support of our community. We love what we do, we love sharing, and we love what our community creates.

Most of the community seemed resigned to accepting that explanation, and have continued to post designs under various licenses to MakerBot's Thingiverse site for others to use and build on. In the case of the mechanism referred to above, the Replicator 2 extruder upgrade, the license employed is CC Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA). It's a liberal license that allows people to do pretty much what they like with the design, provided they give attribution and pass on the same freedoms to any modified versions. But there is one important caveat:

No additional restrictions -- You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

That raises the question whether a patent on the physical object derived from a design released under CC-BY-SA constitutes an additional restriction. Independently of that, there's also the issue of prior art. MakerBot's own blog post on the new extruder notes that several people contributed to the mechanism over a period of time:

Thing #42250 "Replicator 2 Extruder Upgrade" by whpthomas, is one of these very useful designs. It's based on an extruder mod from Thingiverse superstar emmett, who based his design on one from another star user, whosawhatsis.

Although prior art ought to ensure the patent was not granted, we know it doesn't always work like that. But even if MakerBot succeeds in gaining and holding on to patents derived from designs posted to its Thingiverse, it is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory unless the company issues a statement that the patent is purely for defensive purposes, and offers an appropriate license for people to use. If it doesn't, the community's trust in the company, already strained by the move away from open hardware, will almost certainly be gone. That's particularly regrettable given the company's origins, and the following speech from 2012 by company co-founder Bre Pettis on the advantages of sharing, transcribed here by Hack a Day:

When we started MakerBot, we knew we were going to be open source hardware. We were inspired by Arduino, and we were open source software nerds. So, we knew the idea if we could make it and share it, we'd get more back from it. And I think this is something we learned as kids, that sharing is good, that if you share something you get more back from it, but we forget this as adults. So, with open source hardware we're back to that. When you get a MakerBot, you're not just getting a machine, you're getting the knowledge of how it works. You're getting the information about everything that puts it together. So if you want to modify it, or if you just want to learn about it, if you want to hack it, you can do it.

Unless it's been patented by MakerBot, of course...

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: 3d printing, community, derivative works, open source, patents, sharing
Companies: makerbot

TechCrunch Admits That Using Facebook Comments Drove Away Most Of Their Commenters

from the treat-your-community-right dept

I must admit to something of a minor fascination in how other sites manage their comments. As we've noted many times, we've personally found that keeping our comments pretty wide open fosters the best sorts of discussions in the long run. Yes, like any sites, there are some users who are annoying, and some who exhibit trollish behavior, but most people can get past that pretty quick. In fact, at times, those people (while frustrating initially) can spur some really interesting conversations. One thing we've never quite understood, however, is the attack on anonymity that so many sites insist upon. As we've seen over and over again, many of our most insightful comments have come from anonymous commenters.

So I was actually surprised a few years ago when TechCrunch moved to switch all of its comments to Facebook comments, claiming that one of the good things about it was that it required you to provide your real name. Apparently that wasn't actually such a good thing for lots and lots of commenters -- as after nearly two years, TechCrunch has dumped Facebook comments and is pleading for commenters to come back.

Our comments are obviously far from perfect, but we've never been at a loss for having spirited discussions on nearly all of our posts. There's just something awesome about the community that likes to really dig into the various stories. That's part of why we've always viewed this site as a discussion site, rather than a "news" or "reporting site." We post stuff with our opinion because we expect people to respond -- good or bad, agree or disagree -- in the comments, and for some sort of discussion to ensue. That doesn't mean that we like to encourage trollish behavior, but we recognize that encouraging a real community has its benefits, and one key aspect to that is keeping the barrier low. Too many other sites seem to think the best way to deal with the messiness of some annoying commenters is to make it more difficult to comment. However, as TechCrunch has discovered, like chemotherapy, it's a solution that can kill off many of the "good" cells along with the "bad."

Filed Under: anonymity, comments, community, ease of use, engagement, facebook comments, openness, techcrunch
Companies: facebook

First Word, Last Word And Letting Our Biggest Fans Help Shape The Conversation In Our Comments

from the hop-to-it dept

With the launch of our new Techdirt Insider Shop, one of the new features we've enabled on the site is something we're calling First Word/Last Word, which you may have noticed appearing on the blog. The feature allows Techdirt Insiders with credits to help highlight key comments as either "The First Word" (on top of all the other comments) or "The Last Word" (beneath all of the comments, even if other comments are added after). You can designate one of your own comments, or feel free to designate a truly awesome comment from someone else.

Because this is such a new feature, I wanted to discuss a little of the thinking behind it. Despite blogging for well over a decade, I'm still amazed by how much controversy there is over blog comments. Some people insist that they're completely useless. Others spend many hours of their day engaging in discussion and debate in the comments. There are various attempts to try to "improve the quality" of comments out there, including banning anonymous comments, heavily moderating comments or doing things like having editors highlight the best comments. Others have integrated third-party platforms to manage comments, such as Facebook or Disqus. Gawker keeps pushing the bleeding edge with a series of commenting experiments that try to increase the importance of comments while decreasing the number of comments that actually get viewed.

Over the years, we've taken a very open approach to comments. We don't require a login to comment (though there are benefits to having one). We don't require people to identify themselves at all. And despite the default assumption some have that anonymous comments are bad, we quite regularly find that comments from anonymous users are some of our most insightful and funniest comments. To that end, we've always focused on trying to do more to highlight and encourage good behavior -- such as highlighting the comments voted most insightful and funniest, both with badges on the comments and in our weekly summaries.

With the First Word/Last Word feature, we're trying to take all of that a step further. We've seen how a single trollish commenter can sometimes (not always) derail an interesting conversation by getting in early and saying something completely brain dead, then watching (probably with laughter) as the thread disintegrates. Our expanded Crystal Ball may take care of that in some cases by giving insiders more early access to kick off the comments. But, not everyone's going to be able to rush in and be first. With "First Word/Last Word," Insiders with credits can help highlight one or two of the absolutely key comments on a story and put them in places of prominence to help define the overall conversation.

This is very much an experiment (and like all experiments could flop completely). But what fun is it if you never take chances? We've trusted our community for many, many years, and here's another attempt to trust those who become Insiders to help curate the absolute best comments for everyone to see. We hope you'll take part and help us develop an even more interesting and compelling comments section.

You can get your own First Word/Last Word credits at the Techdirt Insider Shop. Most purchases include at least one credit, and subscriptions like the Watercooler Package and the Behind The Curtain Package include a cache of credits that replenishes on a monthly basis.

Filed Under: comments, community, features, first word, last word, techdirt