So yeah, it was a tough primary in the comment sections here. And it was in 2008 too. But no matter how crazy it might have seemed it was getting, I often posted that the comment sections on DK were a world better than on other sites. Smarter, funnier, and much more substantial. A lot of linky love, a lot of help finding the best and most interesting articles out there.
NPR has become the latest site of many to kill their comments section, along with many others listed in the article below, and some not listed, such as The Daily Beast.
www.salon.com/…
NPR is joining a growing list of media organizations that have said “finito” to comments including, “This American Life,” Reuters, Recode, Mic, the Chicago Sun-Times, Popular Science, CNN, the Toronto Star and The Week.
The article talks about how comments sections on line were originally hoped to be a widening of the net to include conversations between the media and its readers. But since journalists rarely engaged in the comments, that didn’t happen. And when they did they quickly became discouraged.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza enthusiastically embracedhis audience when he started his political blog, the Fix, in 2006.
I know firsthand how futile and frustrating comments sections are.
“I would regularly go into the comments to interact (or try to interact) with readers. I incentivized and deputized regular commenters to keep order,” he wrote in a column that extolled NPR’s decision. “Then I gave up. Because none of the tactics or strategies we tried ever had any real impact on the quality of the dialogue happening on The Fix. No matter what the original post was about, a handful of the loudest — or most committed — voices in the room hijacked the comments thread to push their own agendas.”
The article goes on to talk about the issues on the NPR comment boards.
‘The goal is dialogue,” I wrote in a 2011 essay on comment sections for the Nieman Reports, “but it’s pretty clear that the debate between dialogue and diatribe is still being waged. From the view I’ve had for the last three years as NPR’s ombudsman I’d say diatribe is winning—hands down.” It’s still true today.
The trolls who rule the comment seas may actually have won because they often scare away people with their vicious attacks. An infinitesimal number of NPR’s 25 to 35 million unique monthly users bothered to join story-page conversations.
No budget to more effectively moderate, so they shut the thing down. The article goes on to talk about the current efforts of various media outlets to improve their comments sections---worth reading the whole thing.
My point here is how well Daily Kos has been able to do this, although far from perfectly. But fact is, this place is not the fetid swamp of comments found on most political sites. Not even close. And even those that attract better commenters, do not offer community interaction.
I think that’s a major reason why the DK is much more successful with its comment sections. The mind set of Kos and his staff IS community minded. There are endless examples of this, not the least of which is dedicating the right hand part of the site to commenters who wish to write in depth and start a conversation. Then there are the many Kossack groups that answer to various needs and interests.
Lastly, while the moderation system here is again, far from perfect, it seems to work well enough so that the comment sections remain vibrant with links, information and humor. Sure, there’s some that are better than others, but if you’re going to go tiptoeing thru the weeds of a pie fight, you know what you’re in for.
I have seen many here threaten to leave, most do not, and those who do have a way of showing up again. Because you don’t find a site like this one everywhere, or easily. So a hat tip to Kos and his staff from me. Everyone is doing at least something right.