What to do about comments?
Without doubt, one of the thorniest problems anybody who produces content on the internet faces is managing comments and participation; and generally speaking, few publications do it well.
A lot of publications simply throw up their hands and do nothing, seeing management and supervision of comments, beyond a certain volume, as a drain on resources that is still difficult to automate. The outcome, particularly regards subject that arouse passions, such as sport or politics, is that they become a kind of open sewer, of no interest to anybody, and possibly a source of legal problems.
A large part of the problem is anonymity: the erroneous belief held by a lot of people that contributors must be obliged to use their real name, backed up by their email address, when the reality is that anonymity is a right, and what’s more one that is difficult to fetter.
Other sites require contributors to identify themselves in case legal action ensues as a result of a comment, although they allow people to use a pseudonym. Some publications allow anonymity as long as contributors don’t break the rules, restricting instead using somebody else’s name or astroturfing, whereby a bunch of people create false names to simulate widespread support for a position.
The idea that comments are a problem runs counter to the function of pages like Quora, Reddit, Slashdot and others, where comments are the real added value, where monitoring based on peer evaluation is the means by which the visibility of interesting comments are raised, along with their authors, but buries in the mud insults and the uninvited. On pages such as Quora, it is not unusual to see well-known figures expressing their point of view or participating in topics related to themselves, along with internationally renowned experts taking part in discussions about their specialty. Here it is users who manage the page, in the belief that they provide value.
For a media outlet, a community of interesting and interested commentators that add value is an increasingly evident need: we now live in a world in which there is always going to be somebody out there connected via the internet who knows more than the author of the news item or the article, and who is willing, ready, and able to add their view or opinion, or some kind of extra information, thus enriching everybody else’s experience. If that person wants to make their contribution to our page and not somebody else’s becomes a key aspect of validation.
One of the best ways to assess the quality of a site’s content is by the way they handle their comments.
(En español, aquí)
