As I wrote regarding Washington Post's experience in January:
From experience, you cannot make effective use w/reader comments without moderation (or at least continuous monitoring). Its crucial on a lot of levels. Setting up an unattended forum and stepping back is NOT reader engagement. You can either be a passive facilitator or take an active hand in closing the media gap.
Yet we went to a semi-automated system ourselves in May. Why? Manhours. The volume was simply overwhelming.
The semi-automated system kept commentors who had a record of more than 5 percent of their posts deleted on a manual approval track; everyone else went through automatically. The idea was to keep an eye on the more flagrant abusers while people with a good record would be allowed a free pass. A reporting mechanism was put in place for commentors to report violations that appeared.
What we found was that the new system was vulnerable, that the reporting mechanism itself wasn't well worded and also open to misuse, and that the increased flow of comment activity (due to instant appearance on the site of most posts) made it harder than ever to keep discussions on point.
We have been able to keep a pulse on activity, though not as much as we could when we had a fully moderated operation. We were able to react swiftly in this case, which may not have been possible had we left things fully unattended. On the other hand, could we have pre-empted the entire episode had we been fully moderated? Chances are much much higher that we could have, but there's never a 100 percent certainty in this arena.
I have been disappointed in the use of the reporting mechanism, but we'll own a lot of that ourselves due to its wording. We've rewritten this function to make it unequivocally clear that readers can - and should - remove a questionable comment for additional review. In my view, a significant factor of that day's escalation occurred because readers opted to call the offenders to task via more posts, rather than reporting the offenses. I've also seen users take down each other's post out of spite - a kind of Zen trolling behavior.
Interestingly enough, most of our regular commentors have been quite supportive of us through this reassessment phase, with many of them emailing us saying they too had become discouraged with the quality of discussion. Some have lobbied charges of censorship and stifling dissent, particularly so close to the elections, but on the whole the feedback we're getting is that yes, we've been too lax.
As regular Eldon Howell emailed me, "I think you've gotta get tough", and his sentiment has been echoed by many others.
But how tough is tough? The event raises the broader issue of who owns the public dialogue with the news. Views on this point have spanned widely across the spectrum, not only across the newsroom but across the range of public feedback we've received as well. I find it interesting and encouraging that differing philosophies and points of view managed to arrive at the same conclusion (though for very different reasons and motives)- the need of a tighter reign on the quality of discussion.
Wherever you find yourself on that line, any relationship implies trust. The web department trusts the public to share with us their voice and opinion, and the public in turn trusts us - and to an extent themselves - to maintain that dialogue in an appropiate manner.
But it's not "us" and "them" - we are and should be a very part of the community we serve. I've long been passionate about closing that gap. It seems to me that in the effort to faciltate ease and speed of discussion, a sense of separation came and we all may have felt less engaged, less connected. Maybe even less trusted, or willing to trust. We increased the quanitity of discussion, but inadvertently decreased trust, and therefore quality, and connectedness.
When we return in a modified way - scheduled for Monday morning - I'm looking forward to reconnecting.
