OT: My local paper's site scraps article comments

[Bob Jersey]

It's a systematic thing throughout the Advance-Newhouse organization...

https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/news/2020/02/lehighvalleylivecom-removing-comments-from-site-on-thursday.html (link)

https://www.nj.com/news/2020/02/njcom-removing-comments-from-site-on-thursday.html (link)

https://www.al.com/news/2020/02/end-of-an-era-comments-end-on-alcom-on-thursday.html (link)

the exact figures vary, but consistently suggest only single-digit percentages of viewers look at comments, while hundredths of one percent reply to them.

NBD... social-media posts at reporters get far more looks.

B

[Steve Timko]

It is a ridiculous amount of labor moderating something only a sliver of readers participate in. Plus they tend to be hate magnets and that turns of a good portion of the readership, some of whom stop reading the articles altogether.

[Adam Bowie]

I'm pretty sure that they only really exist(ed) because of the page views they generated. If the hassle and value is so low that the extra views don't make financial sense, then ditching them is a good move. I mostly still regret looking "below the fold" at the comments, but I just can't help myself...

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[Steve Timko]

It's not just page views. It's creating a sense of community. Newspapers have lost their connection to the community. 

The problem is that it becomes tribal. The different factions of the political spectrum attack each other, sometimes allying with another faction against a common enemy. Nevada is a hotbed of Libertarianism and many of their views (pro-choice, legal drugs, gay rights) directly conflict with the Christian right. But they will gang up on Socialists.

Casual readers will come in to offer their Two Cents and will find themselves caught in a gang fight.

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[Tom Wolper]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 7:06 PM Steve Timko <steve...@gmail.com> wrote:

It's not just page views. It's creating a sense of community. Newspapers have lost their connection to the community. 

The problem is that it becomes tribal. The different factions of the political spectrum attack each other, sometimes allying with another faction against a common enemy. Nevada is a hotbed of Libertarianism and many of their views (pro-choice, legal drugs, gay rights) directly conflict with the Christian right. But they will gang up on Socialists.

Casual readers will come in to offer their Two Cents and will find themselves caught in a gang fight.

In the early days of the internet the big thinkers wrote about the transition of newspapers from print to digital. The old way was to have an article printed on paper. Any corrections or updates would come from a new article on a new day. On the internet, instead of a series of articles, there would be a continuously updating story. The online article was to be a live document and the comments section was to be reader feedback, offering corrections, updates, and opinions on the story.

There might be instances where it worked but it certainly never built up to scale in newspapers. I remember posting corrections and updates to articles on an alt weekly's website and seeing them ignored. Comments are only meaningful if the writer of the article joins in the discussion but the writers are spending their time on new articles. I know of one local sports website with a very active comments section but they are subscriber driven and only subscribers can post comments. Since the commenters have demonstrated a commitment to the website the site's writers will join the comment threads.