Just complaining about online comments isn't enough | Social Signal

Visit most news sites, and you'll find some of the web's most pointless, thoughtless and mean-spirited conversations unfolding in the comment threads. Angry, bitter, hateful people seem drawn to the comment form at the bottom of news stories like flies to a landfill.

That's been the case now for years, but the industry is finally waking up to it... in fits and starts. Exhibit A: Sunday's column by Jack Knox of the Victoria Times-Colonist:

[A]t least the letters page insists on accountability, and doesn't allow anonymous sniping by those who hide behind pseudonyms. At least the letters page, while encouraging a broad range of opinion, demands writers demonstrate at least a passing acquaintance with fact. At least the letters page demands that we add more to the debate than "Bummer."

...Having swallowed an electronic laxative, the world has become afflicted with digital diarrhea.

Lovely.

The column goes on to level charges familiar to anyone with a copy of the Official Curmudgeon's List of Complaints about the Internet, 2008 Edition (Now With Facebook and Twitter!): people post whatever comes to mind without thinking about it, blogs are inane, it's just a stream of drivel... (And at that point the column pretty much vanishes into territory already richly mined by people who haven't noticed - or would rather not acknowledge - there's both quality and crap to be found in social media, just like in journalism.)

But Knox isn't wrong about the low quality of online comments on news sites, even if he does seem to confuse them with social media more generally. They're often godawful, and his example, drawn from a CBC news story's comments, is near to my heart. From a post I wrote last year:

Drop by any CBC News story on, say, a crime, and by far the most common comments are people who have nothing to add except anger and demands for vengeance. Oh, and off-the-cuff diagnoses like "he's clearly a sociopath."

Where Knox goes wrong is thinking that thoughtlessness necessarily goes hand-in-hand with online comments... and in writing them off as a lost cause. Yes, the culture of user comments on news stories is often poisonous - but that doesn't put them beyond hope.

Instead of throwing up their hands, several news outlets are rolling up their sleeves and grappling with the challenge.

The Tyee, for example, made a series of changes last year that improved the tone and quality of comments there. And The Globe and Mail's community editor, Matthew Ingram, has been very public in sharing his thoughts and ideas on upgrading the conversation on their site. Check out, for example, this blog post on the role of anonymity and accountability.

One big reason sites like The Globe and Mail and The Tyee are making progress? They actually devote resources - not just technological features, but people's time - to making commenting work. And people, of course, are the crucial ingredient in a successful online community: setting the tone, drawing out positive contributions, redirecting negative behaviour and spurring productive conversation.

That's not to say either the Globe's or the Tyee's community is without its challenges. But diving in and experimenting, innovating and animating is getting them further down the road to healthy conversations than all the complaining in the world.

Which is a point I would have made on the Times-Colonist article... if it allowed comments.