By Susan Matthews, APR, principal

I’ve said on many an occasion: “If I want to get really down on humanity, all I need to do is read some reader comments in response to an online article.” Too often these jibes are beyond nasty; they’re downright cruel.

In conversations with reporters from the Indianapolis Star, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, I hear them lament that they hesitate to interview some people for fear that the innocent interviewee will suffer taunts and insults through online reader feedback. How sad and ironic that in the spirit of increased dialogue, we’re limiting the stories, people and ideas that are offered to us through the news media.

So it was with great interest that I read Andrew Alexander ‘s article in today’s Washington Post. The Post is striving to balance respect for others on the one hand, with the benefits of free speech on the other. And they’re coming up with some creative solutions.

Alexander reports: “The solution is in moderating — not limiting — comments. In a few months, the Post will implement a system that should help. It’s still being developed, but [Hal] Straus [who oversees commenting for the Web site] said the broad outlines envision commenters being assigned to different ‘tiers’ based on their past behavior and other factors. Those with a track record of staying within the guidelines, and those providing their real names, will likely be considered ‘trusted commenters.’ Repeat violators or discourteous agitators will be grouped elsewhere or blocked outright. Comments of first-timers will be screened by a human being. When visitors click to read story comments, only those from the ‘trusted’ group will appear. If they want to see inflammatory or off-topic comments from ‘trolls,’ they’ll need to click to access a different ‘tier.’”

Sounds like a good approach to me. What do you think?

Tags: borshoff, communication, dialogue

This entry was posted by Borshoff on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 1:45 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comment Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.