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Online comments: Let’s try again
By Jeff Tecklenburg
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Yes, thegazette.com has changed the rules for online commenting again, as announced Sept. 2. For good reason.
Over the past few years, Gazette managers have revised the commenting process several times in hopes of encouraging a more civil, informed and broad-based online discussion.
Bottom line: Nothing we’ve tried has worked very well. But we’ll keep working on it.
As of Sept. 4, no more comments are allowed on news articles or opinion letters, editorials and guest columns. That doesn’t mean online commenting is gone. Instead, we have made major changes to give monitors more control.
We understand that not everyone is happy with the changes. We’re certainly not out to limit the free speech rights. We want to encourage healthy, open debate of ideas and public issues. Yet free speech also comes with some responsibility, yes, even online.
The former process that allowed unscreened comments to be posted 24-7 for many articles proved very difficult to manage. Without online administrators devoting enormous amounts of time trying to review every comment in a timely fashion, the threads came to be dominated by a relative handful of commenters. The content and tone of those threads often was personal and denigrating. Unfounded allegations and undocumented claims flew back and forth, often within minutes of a news or opinion article post.
Warnings and bans were issued. In the end, that system was unworkable and did not add value to our website.
There are still options to comment. We invite you to try them.
First, the Daily Conversations at the top of our home page. Each day, you’ll find new topics with background. Comments submitted will be prescreened before they’re approved for posting — or rejected. We’re looking for comments that add credible information to the discussion, offer solutions to problems or are entertaining without resorting to personal attacks. The rules of engagement that we previously used are still in effect. See http://thegazette.com/rules-of-engagement/
Individual Gazette sports, news and opinion bloggers have the option to keep comments open without automatic prescreening, but bloggers will moderate. That’s also true for the new reporter notebooks you can find under the topical news sections within the News link. Reporters aim to directly engage readers, answer questions and seek constructive feedback and suggestions.
I am among those ready to take your comments and questions.
Jeff Tecklenburg is Opinion Page editor for The Gazette. Comments: jeff.tecklenburg@thegazette.com or (319) 398-8262.
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The conversation section does not appear when I load the homepage. However multiple copies of the same sports pictures do appear. what is the deal? Doe the page time out before it finishes loading? If so limit the number of pictures to the actual stories and save homepage for links to stories.
James,
Are you still having trouble loading the Daily Conversations from the home page? Hopefully, that was a temporary problem that a refresh solved.
I feel as if you are treating your readers as if we were children.
You open up a forum for public comments and you are not going to get civil, informed discussion. And why? Because too many people have no idea what that is. They get their cues from Captain Steve or Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or any number of TV talk shows where people interrrupt and talk over each other and what passes for informed discussion is calling people names. I never thought I would ever miss William Buckley but it seems the ghost of Joe Pine has taken over political discourse and we have to figure out a way to deal with it besides shutting people up
Over and over I hear that in a society that values freedom of speech, the answer to bad speech is not censorship but more speech.
Maybe. Maybe not. More speech runs the risk of devolving into noise
But shutting down these forums in favor of a set number of “safe” topics is not the answer either. As rude and noisey as these discussions could get, the upside was that they forced us all to listen, however badly, to people we didn’t agree with.
But if I may offer a suggestion. Instead of playing teacher pick the topics, use the tendancy of these conversations to devolve the longer they go on to control the content.
1) end the feature that sends new comment alerts to reader e-mail
2) close the comments after seven days
Civility may be an admirable standard but when you’ve got a standard with no clear or universally accepted definition, you have no standard at all.
Thanks for the suggestions, Roberta. We’re willing to try new approaches, as we’ve demonstrated, but managers want to try the approach in place to see how it works.
Sorry, but I still feel as if we are being treated as if we were naughty children
When I emailed regarding the commenting I mentioned that perhaps Mayor Corbett is getting his wish and the people of Cedar Rapids are silenced (in this respect anyway). I never heard back. I even linked a Gazette story stating that is what the Mayor wanted (citing sources).
Mary,
I did not see the email to which you referred; did you send it to me or someone else?
Also: Our decision to try the new approach to online comments is based on an overall assessment that the previous system was not providing a broad-based, valuable community conversation — not on the complaints of any one person.
Thanks.
Question,
How is this restricted format going to broaden the base or make the conversation more valuable?
If the conversation is less personal, and what’s posted is more focused on information and civil argument, we think that can be more valuable. Will it broaden the base of contributors? Who knows for sure. We’re giving it a try.
If you haven’t noticed, you have already lost commenters on these pages. Now if the few that are left comment too often they are scolded and turned away. No matter how valuable the added comments might be to a conversation. It’s a shame too because we are all adults on here but with your new rules we are left feeling like children.
I in fact emailed someone else. To some it may seem like an attempt to silence people who currently disagree with the current issues going on in Cedar Rapids. I am happy that is not the case.
Thank you for clarifying.
Jeff: I fully support the Gazette’s changes regarding the Opinion Page. Best decision I’ve seen in the last four years. More often than not the conversation was dominated by five or six individuals exibiting a “gang metality” attacking anyone who opposed their views.
You many want to expand the “online opinion” page by having a “topic of the week” section where an equal number of letters are printed , ie. six , both liberal and conservative to maintain a fair and balanced forum. I would however limit the number of submissions, or number of letters printed, an idividual may submit to keep the same people from dominating the conversation as before. Thanks……….just an idea that’s all.
Good Job Gazzette!!!
Thanks for the suggestion. In the printed Gazette, we strive to present a variety of letters that represents viewpoints from across the political spectrum. Those are already posted online. But perhaps an expanded online letters section would be a worthy addition, with the same goals of variety and balance in mind. We’ll see.
Closing down the comments does shut off free speech.Silencing speech because it is somehow bad, is exactly the reason we have free speech in the first place. Bad speech which closes up all the remarks, does in comments is based on a fascist ideal that control is always best and anything that is “free” in fact is bad because it can’t be controled.
Just a reminder that we are a private company and the Gazette website is ours to operate and for which to be responsible. There are still opportunities to comment, as we outlined. And you are free to start your own blog or talk with people by many others means if you object to our system. This revision of online comments does not shut off free speech.
Which begs the question, why did you open comments up in the first place? As to responsibility, you certainly could monitor the comments before releasing them for legality or issues of hate, name calling or not adding anything to the discussion. Blanket closing down of subjects to be commented on with the exception of “soft” stuff is a waste of time. We have a city government that is out of control, a police department that isn’t functioning, and plenty that deserves comments, but you decide these are off limits because you are a private company? I guess I am confused with what became of the “Fifth Estate” that was to insure us of good government.