Comments Are Terrible (But They Don’t Have To Be)

Panelists: Greg Barber, The Coral Project & Talia Stroud, Engaging News Project

Moderator: Erica Palan, Philly.com

Trolls are terrible people, says science

A commenter attacking a post can skew a reader’s perception of the post – and the science behind it (Brossard & Scheufele, 2013)

Readers might misattribute opinions expressed in comments as coming from the article (Lee, 2012)

Trolling behavior correlates with the Dark Tetrad of human personality: sadism, psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavelliannism (Buckels, 2014)

To ward off trolls, publishers are killing comments…right?

Sacramento Bee: Dropped comments in 2013, restored them in 2015

National Catholic Reporter: Dropped comments in 2014, restored them in 2014

Las Vegas Review Journal: Dropped comments in 2015, restored them in 2015

Kyiv Post:Dropped comments in 2015, restored them in 2015

Not Exactly.

What good are comments?

We see real value in our site playing host to intelligent, polite conversation. We will continue to prioritize maintaining a safe and welcoming atmosphere as we try to provide a way for our community to engage in a mature dialogue around our content

-Las Vegas Review Journal in a post on Medium.com

So are you here to tell us every news site needs comments?

No.

We don’t need comments.

We need to interact with users.

My organization has…

No money

Tight deadlines

Overbearing bossesGiant bees

…how do we find time to interact?

Limited technology

Quiet bees

A horrible CMS

That’s where we come in.

The Coral Project Collaboration: Mozilla, The New York Times, The

Washington Post, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Goal: To improve dialogue on news sites through open-source software and improved best practices

And us.

Engaging News Project• Based at the University of Texas at Austin, funded by

the Democracy Fund, Hewlett Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation

• Goal: Provide research-based techniques for engaging audiences in commercially viable and democratically beneficial ways

What can we do now to improve online dialogue?

Interact Chances of an uncivil comment declined by 15%

when a reporter interacted in a comment section.

Commenters providing evidence increased by 15% when a reporter interacted.

“I’ve had a really positive experience getting involved in the comments. It encourages me to look at the comments section more. The readers respond well when I go in and comment. They generally will thank me for my response.”

-Jessica Parks, county reporterThe Philadelphia Inquirer

What can we do in the future?

Incentivize thoughtfulness

Determine best contributions

Highlight best contributions

Invest in the social architecture (The Engaging News Project is working on this)

Model desired behavior

Create software that’s free to use and integrate for publishers of all sizes (The Coral Project is on it)