It’s hard to say what tipped us over the edge. Maybe it was when one reader had the audacity to write a letter to our Voices section – foolishly accepting responsibility for his thoughts by attaching his name to them – only to have anonymous readers make irrelevant and libelous statements about his love life.
Or maybe it was Monday, when we published a story about our friend and colleague, Jeff Engelhardt, whose family members were killed last week. Some readers responded with sympathy; others, however, were not duped. They knew we would leap at the chance to write about our friend’s pain, and they made sure to turn the comments on the story into a sophisticated discussion – complete with name-calling – about the way in which the Daily Egyptian acknowledges tragedies that affect its staff.
It could have been these comments, or any number of similar ones, that flipped the switch from annoying to inexcusable. But the real cake-topper was the person who referred to an articulate, passionate student leader – who also happens to be a young black woman – as an “ape.”
And here’s the overall problem–it’s not that a few racists come in and shit all over the place–it’s that the site comments are dehumanizing and have no business in a newspaper.
The racism, the homophobia, the sexism, the general batshit craziness is all annoying, but the true problem is that every time you go to a crime article in the Post-Dispatch on line, you know violent imagery about what should happen to the perpetrator will be at the bottom of the page. Understanding that people might have violent impulses towards horrible people is one thing, allowing their revenge fantasies and calls for summary execution to be posted on nearly every story is not healthy or normal.
Or in some tragic accident you will read several posters going on about the moral degenerate who had the audacity to get hit by a truck or some other random event. Much of the criticism is libelous, made up entirely in the imaginations of bitter regulars.
We get people using stereotypes about gay men and how they would act in a bank robbery that are tremendously offensive, but stay up–I guess because there is some way in which that is useful discussion. Or we can have white supremacist and Hollocaust denial garbage being posted and left up because all ideas are equal.
But they aren’t–and while freedom of speech is absolute in the public sphere, no web site has to turn itself over to white supremacists, anit-semitic jackasses, and homophobic neanderthals in the name of open discussion. If the Post-Dispatch wants to be a responsible newspaper the least it can do is delete libelous claims made up by posters, ban repeated racist, homophobic, and sexist posters, and create a discussion space for discussion–not hatred and violence.
Creating a discussion space does not have to mean giving every white supremacist with enough self-control to avoid using the n word (see the Mondays comment yesterday) a venue. And it doesn’t mean every story needs open comments. It means funnelling a productive discussion free of violent imagery, racial hatred, and actual discussion in a forum that is inviting instead of infuriating.
The current set-up at the Post-Dispatch is confusing drawing readers who will be loyal contributors and readers with drawing loons looking for an outlet. One is a viable long term strategy–the other is a way to make your site unattractive to the average reader.
It attracting people to comments, but not people who are going to be the readers of the future. They are parasites looking to make it look as if they are the silent majority they often claim they are while creating such a hostile environment no one will stick around who is mentally healthy.
You make some really good points, and to make matters worse, they have done themselves a lot of damage by allowing it to continue–attracting people who enjoy this sort of thing and driving away people who don’t. If they were to ever get a sensible moderation policy in place, they’d be starting from a hole; they have to re-train their readers in acceptability standards.
I used to moderate a fairly large discussion site and the level of discourse was kept pretty high simply because of the high quality of what already existed. We had a couple of persistent trolls and the absolutely most effective thing we did to them was a little coding trick where they would see their own replies within a thread, but nobody else could. Why the PD does not at least ban usernames is beyond me; the more persistent will register another username (and you can often combat this with IP bans) but it will get rid of a large percentage of the bozos.
A change in architecture would also go a long way–at the end of each story, a user should be able to click once to see all comments. (This paging through to read comments, three to five at a time, is nonsense from every perspective; you either want to read comments or you don’t.) That way if you’re not interested in the discussion, you aren’t confronted with it, especially with the moderation after the fact as the PD has it.
I really love reading the comments on the stories that deal with history; the articles about the Admiral or the Arena or whatever. Sharing memories and information is a tremendous use of the technology.