Two years ago this site had a pretty bad reputation for being a tough place in terms of the comment section. People told me they would avoid the comment section altogether, and some people did not even like going to the site because of what they called vitriol.
We did two things that I think has really cleaned up the site. First, we required registration. The biggest driving force was that there were a few posters that would post under a bunch of different monikers. Sometimes they would come on to agree with themselves, sometimes they would argue with themselves just for the sake of argument.
While we do not care what people post as long as it is on-topic and not personally insulting, we do care that people are only posting under one name at a time.
Second, we started moderating the site. I have to thank Don Shor for his great work here, and it has made a tremendous difference.
Things are not perfect. Don is around a lot, but the two of us are not around 24/7 and sometimes we do not catch things immediately. Occasionally something that appears innocuous rubs someone the wrong way.
Moreover, while there are over 1000 different people registered to post, there is a small core of regulars who post all of the time and a somewhat larger group of semi-regulars who post periodically, and a bunch of people who read and never comment. I would estimate that less than one percent of the readership comments. Those who do comment tend to disagree, and it is impossible for anyone to know what the Vanguard readership actually thinks.
I was reading Stuart Leavenworth’s column in the Bee yesterday, and he asked the question about whether the letter writers should be subjected to nameless online commentators.
I have to be very honest: the Bee is an example of how not to run your comment page. I will explain in a moment, but first let us look at what Mr. Leavenworth had to say for himself.
He wrote, “Newspapers have long hosted a very cool feature – letters to the editor. This is our daily bulletin board of commentary from lay citizens – people who, for the most part, are not journalists or public figures or paid pundits but are willing to put their names behind their opinions.”
I agree. And he also points out the comment feature has not undercut the volume of letters received, which is a good thing and, in fact, he argued that their mail bag is overflowing with more letters than they can publish.
He wrote, “Yet one thing has changed for letter writers in the digital age. Their signed opinions are subject to online comments from anonymous posters on the Web.”
“I never gave much consideration to this when I joined the editorial board seven years ago. Back then, we didn’t get a lot of online comments on letters,” Mr. Leavenworth wrote. “It is different now. On any given day, our letters may receive more than 200 comments, depending on the topics being bandied about.”
He went on to cite some examples of the frequent occurrence where “anonymous posters take personal swipes at people who’ve chosen to sign their names to letters we publish.”
Is that fair? I do not know.
He defended, like I do, the need for anonymous online comments, citing that “it creates an outlet for expression for, say, state workers who might want to comment on state policy without fear of retribution from bosses. It is a fixture of the modern online world. Internet users have come to expect it.”
But he continued, “Yet should The Bee subject letter writers to personal attacks and comments from people who won’t put their names behind their opinions?”
However, he is actually missing the point. It is not just signed letter writers subjected to it, it is everyone. If you find yourself the subject of a story, you can be criticized by a bunch of people who are at their computers and know nothing about you other than what is in the paper.
There is an argument to be made that at least letter writers have made a choice as to whether or not to be in the paper.
So let me provide you with an example that I promised a few minutes ago.
Remember the Nang Sam case that we ran last week? Well, the Bee ran the DA’s press release on that story, which was fairly bare-boned and did not get into the nuances that we did.
One of the more thoughtful comments was, “Hopefully, Judge Mock will DO THE RIGHT THING and THROW THE BOOK at this ANIMAL!!! (but I won’t hold my breath)……”
Another, “C.A.S.T.R.A.T.I.O.N..”
Still another, “HANG BY PENIS TILL DEAD.”
These are not atypical of Bee comments on other stories. No one bothered to flag these comments and report abuse and the Bee apparently is not really monitoring their comment section. The comment section in the Bee is generally nasty, knee-jerk and often right wing. By that I mean not in the thoughtful way that some of our conservatives present themselves on this site, but just in nasty and knee-jerk ways, that I only comment on things where I can add my insight.
And in fact, we see a couple of interesting comments on the Nang Sam article on the Bee.
One person wrote, “He did NOT do it… This girl is such a liar. Her friends admitted she lost her virginity to an older high schooler. She’s evil. Evil. So little proof he did it, and so much evidence he did not do it. If a girl was physically assaulted by her own brother, don’t you think she would have been devastated? No, she kept a straight face and laughed like there’s no tomorrow. This poor man, a young girl’s lies always rules over the truth. What kinda of world of fake justice is this? That girl was with a family member or friend 24/7, impossible. This is wrong..”
Another claimed to be his brother, of course we have no way of knowing that it is the brother, but given the content I suspect it is since a lot of this came up in court: “I’m his lil brother. And he never even sexually rape her. All of this is such a lie. DA nor the judge wouldnt even believe my story when i gone up to testify. Because I share room with her since birth. Me and my lil bro and my sis. all share room. This is some BS!!! what kind of law is this if this person is not quilty but still give him life in prison. My brother dont have any criminal background what soever. AGREE WITH ME IF YOU THINK MY BROTHER SHOULDNT GO TO PRISON. THANKS GOD BLESS HIM FOR HIS SAFETY”
In a typical article, any good comments would be drowned out by a sea of bad comments. Mr. Leavenworth suggested that a typical article would get 200 comments, with a lot of them being of the base variety.
To the point where I have often wondered just what is the point here. Why have comments if you are the Sacramento Bee, and either do not have the resources or the impetus to actually moderate your comments to the point where reasonable people are willing to have reasonable discussions?
As the Davis Enterprise has a more comment-friendly site now with their new format, I have watched them struggle with the same issues that we have had, between open access and civility, freedom of speech and tone.
In the end, I think we have gotten it closer to right. It is not perfect by any means. Topics often get off topic early in the day and never come back to the point of the article. Sometimes we have fought harder to keep the focus than other times.
I think newspapers like the Bee have to figure out what they want to be. Because right now, the Sacramento Bee comment section is meaner and nastier than the Davis Vanguard ever was. They have to figure out if it is worth their while to have comments at all.
It is a good start by Mr. Leavenworth, but I think he needs to examine the question more broadly.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I think Don Shor has done a marvelous job as the gatekeeper for keeping things civil on the Vanguard. The back and forth discussion in the comment section is usually quite lively and insightful. I know I have learned a great deal from the comment section (and the articles themselves), and it has forced me to be on my toes with proper research. I know many in the community have complemented me on my articles and comments on the Vanguard as more representative of their point of view, so obviously many who do not comment are in fact reading this blog.
I have asked these same people at times why they don’t comment themselves. The answer I usually receive is that they don’t feel their writing is up to the standards of the Vanguard and they do not consider themselves deft enough to quickly respond to criticisms of their commentary. Many seem intimidated by the quick give and take of the exchanges between commenters on this blog. Blogging is certainly a different type of medium, and one does have to get used to the intracacies of how it works…
My suspicion is that many do not comment because they are afraid of the criticism that may come back at them. Many people are fairly thin skinned. Others probably feel they just don’t have the time to indulge in blogging. Whatever the reasons, it is very important than many citizens do follow this blog, which is offering a tremendous community service in discussing local political issues in great depth and detail. Even City Council members are willing to come onto this blog and offer comment. That says a lot about the Vanguard…
I used to spend time on the Huffington post. However, never again because of censoring.
A key value in blogging exists when you are using a moniker and developing your blogging personality and your inventory of comments… and making friends that would engage you in debate. The end-game value for most of us spending a lot of time blogging is the participatory education from this unique form of asynchronous debate. We learn from each other, and we do research to develop our own arguments and opinions. In my case, my business has a political component and I blogging helps refine my understanding how others think and respond to political, social and fiscal topics.
However, it takes a while to develop blogging relationships with people you care enough about. The value increases as these blogging relationships develop. Huffington post did a good job with this by allowing bloggers to “friend” each other.
When Arianna Huffington started her romance with AOL she instructed her team of monitors to ramp up censoring. I know this from the signs occurring on the blogs. The censors – primarily idealistic left-facing youngish employees – first started deleting comments… even historical comments. Then they started closing accounts and banning people from posting. They started targeting those with the most colorful, snaky and nasty language. Of course their bias was left and blind and they ended up deleting the comments and canceling the accounts of far more right-leaning bloggers. In the span of about four weeks they closed thousands of accounts and destroyed many thousands of blogging relationships. Many people with hundreds and even thousands of friend disappeared.
As I saw this happening, I opened my own blog and sent the word to everyone on HP still online about my theory of HP censoring in advance of the AOL purchase… and encouraged them to join so we could collect names to include on a letter to AOL. My guess was that HP was trying to quickly reduce the amount of nasty posting before the AOL people questioned the value of the HP community… but at the same time I was guessing that they were not informing AOL of a drop in the number of accounts as they went on this delete frenzy.
HP censors deleted my account and banned me in less than a day after I posted my alert. I opened new accounts and the deleted them and my posts with any hint of the same message. This confirmed that I was on to them. I collected a few names and sent a letter to AOL. I never heard a thing and AOL purchased HP… which I think was a mistake since now AOL has branded itself as being aligned with the hard left.
My point here is that blog owners need to be careful with the line between monitoring and censoring. Frankly I bristle at some at some of the complaining about the language and tone used by others. In many cases it is clear that difference of opinion is driving much of the dislike and “bad language and tone” is a proxy complaint.
My thinking is that once a blog owner develops a base of members, there is a bit of community ownership that must be honored. As with most communities, there are going to be a percentage of people less skilled at articulating themselves without letting some of their anger or frustration show through. Sometimes I think it is warranted and valuable to see this in a post. There is a line, but I think the line should be tolerant to allow some color. For one, it is real… it helps us to understand the level of emotions stirred up by certain topics. It also helps us get to know our community.
One last point… Huffington Post uses a rules filter to disallow posts with certain words and phrases. I’m not sure if that technology is proprietary, or it is something that can be acquired and used for other blogs. For example, a post would not take if you used the work “Nazi”. However, posters then just got creative and wrote things like “N@zi” or “Not-see” . It can become a cat-and-mouse game at some point.
Jeff, I’ll never subscribe to AOL again because of their HP connection. They just don’t get it, because of their left wing politics they’ve lost or will lose many customers. I thought that there might be hope for NBC and MSNBC because they were bought out by Comcast just to learn that last week Obama was cozying up to the owners and CEO of Comcast. Is keeping their left leaning ideologue going why GE sold them to Comcast? If so then DirectTV here I come. I speak with my consumer dollars, that’s my right.
Rust, I hear you. I think AOL blew it big time. HP is toxic. It is the worst type of new media because it lies that it is a “news source” but is far left and, unlike right-leaning Fox, it disallows most content of opposing viewpoints. HP is a place where libs go to feel better about themselves. It is kinda’ like a left-view only ideological AA meeting but without a 12-step program to help them recover.
DirecTV is the best. You could make the case to go there just based on value. They are also building a combo satellite/terrestrial cell network. Once up in 2014 it will start competing with the cell carriers. I just bought a few shares.
Elaine: I agree with everything you wrote. Don is a well-performing moderator in my opinion. And I agree that some people are intimidated to post. I try to encourage them.
[quote]The comment section in the Bee is generally nasty, knee-jerk and often right wing. [/quote]
Interesting; from where I sit it’s quite the opposite…
Others would say it’s often left wing…
I frequently read the Bee comments online. I think the core group which addresses just about every story is mostly conservative. Their views strike me as being quite similar to callers into a typical radio talk-show.
However, when there are stories in the Bee about state workers–obviously an important constituency in Sacramento and a topic the Bee pays attention to–most of the commenters seem to be aligned with the state workers and see things from that, pro-union, left of center point of view.
ERM, “The answer I usually receive is that they don’t feel their writing is up to the standards of the Vanguard and they do not consider themselves deft enough to quickly respond to criticisms of their commentary”
Which or whose standards, I wonder? It seems odd to me that people would shy away from commenting for that reason given the relatively well-educated and informed population of the town, whom I assume make up the marjority of the folks you’ve spoken to about this.
The comment section in the Bee is generally nasty, knee-jerk and often right wing. By that I mean not in the thoughtful way that some of our conservatives present themselves on this site, but just in nasty and knee-jerk ways, that I only comment on things where I can add my insight.
I was pretty cool with this vanguard artcle until I read this statement. The Vanguard couldn’t help itself, it had to take one cheap hit at conservatives in this article. Excuse me, but what Bee is the vanguard reading? I take issue the comments are generally left wing. There is one way of telling for sure. Pick out random Bee newspapers look at the comment section, and tally the number of right wing comments to left wing comments and see who is ahead consistently. I damned sure as hell bet it won’t be right wingers.
[quote]ERM, “The answer I usually receive is that they don’t feel their writing is up to the standards of the Vanguard and they do not consider themselves deft enough to quickly respond to criticisms of their commentary”
SM: Which or whose standards, I wonder? It seems odd to me that people would shy away from commenting for that reason given the relatively well-educated and informed population of the town, whom I assume make up the marjority of the folks you’ve spoken to about this. [/quote]
I know what you mean about the term “standards”! I thought the comments were interesting as to why many will not comment on the Vanguard. My sense is these people are not prepared for the quick give and take required for blogging. Nor did they necessarily want to take the time to do a bit of research or to write.
[quote]I was pretty cool with this vanguard artcle until I read this statement. The Vanguard couldn’t help itself, it had to take one cheap hit at conservatives in this article. Excuse me, but what Bee is the vanguard reading? I take issue the comments are generally left wing. There is one way of telling for sure. Pick out random Bee newspapers look at the comment section, and tally the number of right wing comments to left wing comments and see who is ahead consistently. I damned sure as hell bet it won’t be right wingers.[/quote]
I stopped my subscription to the Sac Bee long ago, bc it was becoming too left leaning. I soon received a call from the subscription dept. They asked my why I was no longer subscribing to the Sac Bee. I made no bones about it, and stated emphatically I was tired of the left-leaning editorial page bleeding onto the front page news coverage. The guy on the other end of the line said he knew that was a problem, that they were working on it…
Another example: the Washington Post versus the New York Times. I avoid reading the comments on the WP site because they’re completely dominated by angry people, nearly all of them right wingers who feel free to say the most horrible, racist things. Any mention of Michelle Obama, for example, quickly turns into “she looks like a monkey,” etc. The NY Times, by contrast, moderates all comments and the result is a lively discussion that I enjoy. I can also sort through all the dross by choosing “reader recommendations” or “highlights” chosen by the Times to include all views.
No one can deny that conservatives are overrepresented in all comment sections, including the Vanguard’s. Yes, liberals pop up now and then, for some stories more than others, but the percentage of conservative commentators is higher than the percentage of conservative voters. Why this is, I don’t know, but it would make an interesting academic study!
[quote]No one can deny that conservatives are overrepresented in all comment sections, including the Vanguard’s. [/quote]
LOL First, what do you consider “conservative”? What do you consider “overrepresented”? Those are very subjective terms…