Blog: Rod Boyce: The editor's desk
Commenting on comments Pt. II
Published Saturday, April 12, 2008
The conversation on comments will continue for some time to come. This week we decided to stop allowing comments on the public safety report and most crime-related stories.
We have to learn as we go with comments and most of us here are committed to seeing that exercise through. I think we owe it to readers to err to the side of open communication and refine where we must. But at the same time we have to be true to the mission of a newspaper to provide accurate and fair content.
The problem with that is we can’t count on comment strings to be fair and accurate. No one should. We have to take these for what they’re worth and, most often, with a large grain of salt.
Don’t get me wrong, comment strings do have their moments. Some strings, taken as a whole, have been instructive and illuminated some issues in ways a basic news story never could. But others have been embarrassingly juvenile, racist, obscene and all those other things we list as no-nos in the site’s User Agreement.
Commenting on the public safety report was prone to draw the worst and seemed to draw any number of anonymous individuals willing to write about their completely unverifiable “inside knowledge” about people named in the reports; patently unfair.
We can’t monitor every comment string and we don’t pretend to be able to do that. We hope to remove flagged comments before too many people have to put up with them. That’s the best we can do.
We tried to allow commenting on public safety and crime reports, but we’ve learned these are just no place for open commenting. The forum need too close of an eye.
Comments, perhaps by their nature, consistently did two things that are under no circumstances acceptable in concert with crime reports; they assumed guilt and they exercised little, if any, empathy — especially with regard to callous comments, baseless aspersions, and racist remarks.
One day last week I looked through several strings and left with a single overall impression; we were allowing people to pile-on against folks who are presumed innocent.
So, no, no more open comments on the public safety report.
I enjoy reading the comments on the stories in the DNM. It would be a nice feature to be able to reply to a specific comment similar to the way the ADN has their comments set up. By the way, it takes a responsible editorial staff to not take the bait and defend every point of criticism. You have done an outstanding job!
Am pleased with your decision.
Upon reading the "Public Safety Report" comments, my thoughts; many people have too much (spare) time on their hands.
My suggestion: VOLUNTEER!!! many charities, businesses, education centers and Military eg.(VFW~Veterans of Foreign Wars & DAV~Disabled American Veterans) would appreciate a helping hand.
Regardless of WHO one helps or HOW MUCH, Volunteering and helping others is far more gratifying and profitable than "gossip".
Heres a thought, make people use a verifiable real name in order to post comments. Its far too easy for someone to hide behind a name that no one will recognize. To your point though until you can do that, it is best to just not have the comments on the public safety report...
Totally off topic... but is there anything being done to address the slow speed of the newsminer site? From 3 seperate networks/computers (2 different ISP's) it loads very slowly for me compared to any other website out there.
Some intermittent speed issues seem to have cropped up in the past few days. We are looking into it.
thats ok about the comments. I'll just go read adn.com and comment there.
Once again, I put my name out there on my comments, if you want to keep people from making unsubstantiated comments, then only allow comments from people that have a verifiable name. I am not afraid to tell people who is making the comment. I have lived in this community for almost 10 years and many people know who I am. I trust myself to be a good judge of what is right and what is wrong to say. If you can't do that, you should not be able to post a comment to the web site...
Scotty -
I have to disagree with you. I post anonymously because I have some pretty controversial beliefs.
I regularly point out what I see as the evil that results from fundamentalist religions. As a result, I have been called many names. I am positive that I have upset many of these fundies. And, I have little doubt in my mind that my family, my property, and possibly even my life could be in danger if my true name was associated with those posts.
In addition, I was one of those people who complained about police activities in the blotter as well as on other articles. As a result, I have already been contacted through the Newsminer private e-mails on two occasions under what I considered to be suspicious circumstances - both times immediately after posting anti-police type comments. Since I do not trust the police or the fact that all of them are truly upstanding citizens, but rather they are people who could also be very upset with what I have posted, I cite this as a second reason for allowing anonymous posts.
Finally, I personally enjoyed the comment section on the police blotter. However, I respect the Newsminer's choice to do what they feel need to do. And, I offer my thanks and gratitude to them for allowing the amount of discussion that is still taking place. I've learned a few things and I can only hope that others have as well.
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