Comments or no comments? That is the question. The Verge says no. Earlier this week The Verge announced that it was turning off comments “for a bit,” however long “a bit” may be. Why? Nilay Patel explains it candidly in this July 6 post:
“…sometimes it gets too intense. What we’ve found lately is that the tone of our comments (and some of our commenters) is getting a little too aggressive and negative – a change that feels like it started with GamerGate and has steadily gotten worse ever since. It’s hard for us to do our best work in that environment, and it’s even harder for our staff to hang out with our audience and build the relationships that led to us having a great community in the first place,” Patel writes.
In the article, Patel says The Verge prides itself on the community it has built as well as the relationships within that community, but the negativity has escalated lately which is counterproductive. It’s time to step back and regroup a little. They’re turning the comments off for the next few weeks, but they will remain active on their forums and they will turn comments on, as they see fit, for certain posts, and eventually on all posts. Their promise to fans:
The Verge is one of a handful of media outlets who have turned comments off or taken a different approach to comments. In April 2014, the Chicago Sun-Times put a temporary ban on comments, stating they’d bring them back after they had introduced a new content management system in October. They also withdrew comments because they can sometimes be negative, racist, hateful and “trollish.”Instead of posting comments, the Sun-Times encouraged readers to share feedback via social media. We visited the site today and could not find comments on the top Sun-Times articles. We’ve asked the Sun-Times for an update.In September 2013, Popular Science turned off comments, citing similar reasons. In February 2015, we reported that Tablet, a Jewish news and culture publication, has taken a different approach. It charges readers $2 per comment or, for frequent posters, $18 per month or $180 per year for commenting privileges.Insider Take:There has been a lot of debate among journalism and media organizations about maintaining comment features. Opponents of turning off comments say journalists and media organizations should include the public as part of the conversation, while others believe that negative and hateful comments do more harm than good.There is no right or wrong answer here. It is a judgment call that each organization needs to make for itself, based on its audience, its content and its need to be both productive and independent. Regardless of an organization’s stance on comments, it should have a policy in place for anyone to access that clearly explains that policy.For example, at the bottom of each post, the Poynter Institute clearly states its policy in brief and links to the full set of guidelines. This is a great example for other organizations to follow.
We’ll update you when we hear back from the Chicago Sun-Times on the status of their comments. In the meantime, please feel free to post yours below. Comments or no comments?
