I wonder if it’s worth having any media organisation run a comments section. With so many commenting platforms that are available for the masses (Twitter, Medium, Reddit, etc.), I wonder if a comments section is more or less a relic of days when there wasn’t a plethora ways of getting your opinion across.
Couldn't agree with this more. Comments in my experience have been so spammed to death with bots that the benefit of a comments section is diminishing when valued in terms of time spent moderating vs. value added to the reader experience.
Social media has effectively superseded the need for comment sections in my humble opinion, providing a similar experience.
Personally I'm guilty of often seeking out comments before or soon after viewing an article or video online. As social creatures I think its reasonable to want, even need, others opinions. The effects of receiving these opinions may not always be positive, but I think they are necessary.
Pragmatically, comment sections can have bots, ads, instigators. I think there is a better solution than outright getting rid of online discussion. There's room here for innovation (Not even technical innovation, I think there's low hanging fruit here in terms of comment section design)
No, they are neither necessary nor worthwhile. I like Bloomberg's approach of including contact information for the editors/authors of a news piece, which provides readers with a channel for feedback without providing a platform for trolls or people who are too stupid to string a coherent sentence together.
Elitist? yes, somewhat. But the 'comments with everything' approach which has become associated with Web 2.0 over the last few years has IMO demonstrated that there is a vast pool of stupid people out there, and a small but persistent group of troublemakers who enjoy baiting other readers. I don't know why so many companies - especially in the beleaguered media industry - have become so tolerant of the cesspool that most comment sections become. There is nothing more destructive to your brand than linking it to the ranting of ignorant know-nothings. Even on 'premium' news outlets such as economist.com, the quality of debate in the commentary section is execrable.
Sadly, I know of no serious research that has been undertaken on the signal-noise ratio of internet comments to content in different social media. So I can't send you back to your publisher armed with any statistical data to show that comment functionality will either help or hurt readership - I only have my own opinion to offer. Although I think 2 way interaction between publishers and consumers is valuable and can help to build persistent audiences, in my view the best way to do this is with a heavily moderated forum, in which some kind of threaded discussion structure makes it easier for readers and editors to prune unworthy contributions. Anyone running a large website with dynamic content needs to employ someone just to keep an eye on comments or reader feedback anyway, if only to be alert to the possibility of people deliberately taking a public crap in the comments; much better, then, filter and moderate visitor contributions proactively, rather than after they've polluted the brand and associated content.
It has been a long time since I actually dove into a comments section on any news site and found anything other than inflammatory arguments. It seems like people target out these news sites intentionally to start these arguments with no intent of listening to the other side. I would much rather come somewhere like here, and actually seem to have mostly civil discussions even when people disagree.
Does anyone find the comment section of any news site informative and useful? If so, where?
I think you are wildly overstating the value of a comments section. As a counter example, take Breitbart. Purely one sided posts with thousands of comments. And yet all those comments do nothing to change the one sided nature of Breitbart.
Hmm, as someone who's run communities for a while, I'd have to say that the quality of a comments section is very heavily dependent on the topic, audience and how well you moderate it.
Over on YouTube for instance, I've had very few negative comments on my videos, and usually found the comments section under them to be a mostly civil place where I can help out people who had trouble with a walkthrough or guide.
Same goes with the comments on blog articles I wrote in the past too. The comments have generally stayed on topic, were always free of personal attacks, etc.
Comment sections can certainly be hellholes, and for large media outlets they usually are. We all know how bad they are on stuff like the BBC, Daily Mail, Guardian, etc.
But they don't necessarily have to be, and they can be entirely valuable if moderated well and related to a topic people don't treat like its the end of the world.
I think there are some places where comments work great and some places where they descend into vitriol and nonsense. I totally respect decisions that go either way. It really depends on the subject matter, your own tone (which definitely sets the tone for the comments) and the amount of energy you're willing or able to put into policing and moderating the discussion.
Personally I'd be happy to never see another comment section on a local newspaper site ever again. They're the absolute worst.
I don't get the infatuation people have with comment sections. Most of the time they're full of spam or really bad trolls. If you want to share your ideas maybe you should host a blog or a vlog (on YouTube) where people are willing to engage you. I know people like to socialize but not every site needs a comment section. Go on Discord, Twitter, Reddit, Slack, or whatever. That site you think needs a comment section doesn't owe anyone a space to share ideas.
I’m happy with the trend of removing comments from online publications. Too many are outright spam (“I make $500 per day on Facebook and so can you!”) or they’re the opinions of ill-informed people who try to spread one agenda or another.
I think having comments everywhere possible was an idea from the web 2.0 era that’s proven to be not all that worth it in most cases. Moderation is hard and it doesn’t make sense for newspapers and magazines to be spending resources on it. There are other forums (reddit, hn) for this sort of thing.
I hate this trend of getting rid of comments for many reasons, but honestly it's usually because the comments section in many publications has some of the most insightful ideas. Yes, you'll occasionally have to see some idiot spouting off or see some spam, but I think the cost is worth it.
Look at Techdirt for example: great articles, and actually insightful and funny comments that add to the discussion. Every article of theirs that I check out gets at least 1 extra page view from me simply because I love checking out the comments. Shoutout to them for nurturing an actual community.
I agree with you that this trend of getting rid of comment sections has more to do with controlling the message. The corporate media doesn't have to (and can't) fool the majority of population with pro-establishment news anymore. But what they're trying to do is convince enough people that they're mostly alone and isolated in opposition to official policies. When there is no comments section with lots of dissenting voices, it's easy to feel like you're alone in being against war propaganda or whatever the latest cause the establishment is promoting.
There’s value in a discussion being tied to the community of news readers as its own social environment. Twitter and Reddit have heavy, biased moderation that don’t even allow many legitimate viewpoints. Plus you have to deal with their user bases, who are strongly opinionated and would drown out the voices of dedicated followers of a newspaper. Just like any community subset has some value in its separation and identity, there is value in the news comment sections.
How many different websites is any one person really commenting on these days anyway? It’s not like 1) independent blogs and forums are really a thing any more, 2) the blogs and forums that do barely exist have comments any more, 3) the major news and media companies have comments on their websites any more, or 4) you’d ever want to read them even if they did (let alone post your own!).
I used to be someone who defended comments in general. I think they are only good for a certain subset of usecases, such as college campus blogs, where different voices can and should be heard. But other sites often do comments rather poorly, and only on the occasional tech blog will one find useful information in a comment, but not usually.
This was my thought as well. Then I started thinking about the huge amount of moderation effort to make sure that comment sections stay civil. From where I stand it seems like for most writers offering a comment section is a lot of work for a very small payoff.
I used to think the magic fix for comment sections was linking them to a concrete identity. Then I see pages where people post deliberately offensive remarks with their name on it, and I decided that most websites don't need a comments section. It seems to work better in smaller communities than the entire Internet.
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