Comments on: 6 tips for comments on stories and j-blogs

By: Teaching Online Journalism » MVPs for February

Teaching Online Journalism » MVPs for February — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:54:52 +0000

[...] 6 tips for comments on stories and j-blogs [...]

By: K. Paul Mallasch

K. Paul Mallasch — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 07:29:34 +0000

I’d love comments from journalists on how it’s been implemented at Anderson Free Press

http://www.andersonfreepress.net/anderson-forums

Of course, I don’t have paid reporters/journalists on staff yet, but I think they’ll fit in really well …

-kpaul

By: Comments redux « A Like Affair With Words

Comments redux « A Like Affair With Words — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:38:12 +0000

[...] February 22, 2008 Continuing the comments thread (*wince*) from yesterday, Mindy McAdams’ 6 Tips for Comments on Stories and J-blogs says more than I ever could about comments. This is a great series of tips. Put the rules where [...]

By: Mindy

Mindy — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:46:50 +0000

If the reporter monitors his or her blog AND story comments — as should be the case — then the reporter will spot any impersonators.

By: albert

albert — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:15:29 +0000

If reporters comment on their own stories, there has to be a sound system for denoting that those comments are left by that reporter.

On our system all comments are anonymous and it’s well known that reporters aren’t allowed to comment on the website. If that policy were to change, I’d worry about anonymous commenters impersonating the reporter.

By: Mindy

Mindy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:21:25 +0000

Yes — read Alf Hermida’s post about using WordPress for a student publication:

http://reportr.net/2008/02/06/switching-your-college-news-website-to-wordpress/

By: Rebecca Coates Nee

Rebecca Coates Nee — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:36:47 +0000

Mindy, We are looking into using a CMS to post student work from our capstone class in multimedia journalism at San Diego State. Do you have any recommendations on which CMS to use?
Thanks -
Becky Nee

By: Anna

Anna — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:03:13 +0000

Paul Graham has a new essay on trolls
“There’s a sort of Gresham’s Law of trolls: trolls are willing to use a forum with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren’t willing to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it. Which means that once trolling takes hold, it tends to become the dominant culture. …”

By: Mindy

Mindy — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:06:41 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly, Patrick, that when reporters are in there (responding), it usually makes the conversation more civil. Not always! But usually.

By: Patrick Beeson

Patrick Beeson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:48:36 +0000

Comments have been a touchy subject at Scripps starting a few months ago when they really began to take off post-Ellington launches.

Most of our sites apply all of the suggestions you mentioned, but continue to have problems from a few select users. These folks are the ones that post abusive comments continuously using many, many new registrations to get around being banned.

To combat this, we created an option to automatically put any newly registered user into a user group. The site manager is alerted by the first five comments from those users, and all comments must be moderated before going live.

If the user passes the test, they can be moved out of this group to a normal users group.

This has helped greatly the sites that have implemented it. But it does require a little more attention since comments are effectively moderated for many users.

Django was also smart to add a feature that allows banned users to think they aren’t banned — those users see their comments, but others don’t.

We’re still looking into other solutions since there doesn’t exist a one-site fits all option.

I do wish more sites, not just Scripps, would encourage journalists to read and respond to comments on their stories. I think this would help with better comments and further the original story.