How to have a civil conversation
Over at Mark Potts’ site Recovering Journalist, he’s got a post with some advice for newspapers that want to allow comments on their news stories (as the Globe and Mail does) — and good advice it is too. Mark came up with the post after the Arizona Daily Star said it is reconsidering its decision to allow comments on its news site. The Star’s “reader advocate” says:
We hoped for tough but respectful debate. We posted guidelines prohibiting certain kinds of comments, but for the most part, we stayed out of the way and let readers speak. In the past month, though, more and more comments are violating our standards. Instead of offering constructive criticism, too many posts are just plain coarse.
To which Mark Potts responds with a list of things newspaper sites can do to prevent that sort of thing, including:
- Require registration and reader log-in… if you ask for registration and a valid e-mail address, it a) frustrates the drive-by crazies… and b) provides the newspaper with a way to identify participants so that, if need be, they can be admonished or banned from the site.
- Put a profanity filter into place… an upfront profanity filter forces people to calm down a bit and be more articulate
- Add “report abusive comment” links to every comment… this lets the audience pitch in to help moderate what goes on in the comments.
- Somebody should be monitoring the comments. Not editing them, not moderating them; just keeping an eye on what’s going on and acting immediately to zap anything that’s untoward and to notify members who get out of line.
As Mark says at the end, “Setting the proper tone for behavior in a comments area goes a long way toward enforcing that behavior: If participants see that the conversation is intelligent, they’ll tend to keep it that way. If it gets coarse and full of trolls, they’ll behave accordingly. Think of a comments area as being like a local bar: If it’s well-lighted and classy, it will attract a better crowd than the dark, nasty biker bar down the street.” Good advice.
