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closeWe’re planning to update our online software that allows readers to post their opinions on stories at TheBellinghamHerald.com. I wish I had a definite date for the change, but I’ve learned never to set deadlines or make promises about technology. I’m hopeful for next month.
Some community members will applaud the changes, others will most certainly not. The system will require users to be registered at TheBellinghamHerald.com and will create personas that allow the community to see all comments and recommendations made by an individual. I don’t have any desire to know who is commenting on our stories. The registration is merely a way to hold people accountable for their comments by providing us an e-mail address where we can contact them. I suspect a great many of the e-mails will be for secondary accounts with aliases.
Many people have already registered so they can see all the Web site’s pages, get newsletters and e-mail news updates. Registration will also be required for upcoming calendar changes, so now is a good time to register.
The user name you’ve registered at TheBellinghamHerald.com will be your user ID for comments. The two people not me who have registered as Julie Shirley are going to need to get new ID. And some who have registered with embarrassing nicknames may want to update their registrations.
The new system will have word filters to remove some profanity. But it’s been my experience that top cussers can be very creative. And you don’t need profanity to be really crude.
But other than those word filters, we’re still not going to do much monitoring of the comments. The system will have strong tools that allow the community to police itself. It will be similar to sites that allow users to vote comments up or down, hiding those that hit a certain threshold.
As we move to the new system, we’ll also change our blog software and be able to create ongoing forums about topics readers want to discuss, away from the news of the day.
We’ll also be able to offer a home to community members who want to blog about issues important to them. Lots already do on their own, but the online traffic at TheBellinghamHerald.com will give community bloggers on our site greater exposure and more readers. If you are interested, please send me an e-mail and we’ll talk when the software becomes available.
Online story comments are relatively new to the newspaper business. They have made me incredibly uncomfortable and sad. They have made me laugh and made me think there are some smart people with good ideas in our community.
Are some vile? Yes. Are some profane? Yes. Are they real? Yes. There’s nothing on the story comments that you won’t hear sitting at a coffee shop or standing in the grocery line. Life’s a messy business and everybody has an opinion.
One of the criticisms of newspapers has been that we are a one-way street. We write. You read.
That’s not very satisfying in this world of constant communication.
Story comments allow for two-way communication between community members, unfiltered by the newspaper.
They are not letters to the editor and we don’t hold them to the same standards. Newspaper readers invite us into their homes, expecting that we maintain a certain level of decorum. Those who choose to participate in online comments generally don’t want us to filter their opinions.
And those online opinions make a lot of people very uncomfortable. We hear about comments from newspaper sources who are used to dealing with reporters’ polite questions. The unfettered comments from their constituents make a few uncomfortable. We also hear from community members who have suffered a tragedy in their family and, among the condolence comments, find vulgarity and speculation.
But for us to make the call on what gets seen and what doesn’t breaks the promise of unfettered conversation online. Herald editors don’t edit comments. But the new software will allow the community the option of dismissing objectionable comments.
The comments are 3.8 percent of our overall page view traffic so far this year, fifth in popularity behind the home page, classified ads, obituaries and the local news section. That’s up from 0.8 percent of the page view traffic for all of 2007.
We don’t count how many comments were made. But we started allowing comments in mid-January of 2007 and for the whole year, we had 287,728 page views on comments. Already this year that number has quadrupled, with 882,220 page views on story comments so far.
It will be weeks before we make the change. You’ll have several weeks to decide if you want to register and participate. In the meantime, we continue to take the good, the bad and the ugly as comments. As I’ve told many readers, when there is an offensive comment, the community rebukes the writer far more effectively than we ever could.
But if you see libel or a criminal threat, please send an e-mail to newsroom@bellinghamherald.com and we’ll check it out.
Julie Shirley is executive editor of The Bellingham Herald. E-mail her: Julie.Shirley@bellinghamherald.com. Phone: 715-2261.
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