After turning off all site comments on Tuesday, AOL-owned Engadget today flipped the comment switch back on, ending a two-day hiatus resulting from its editors seeing too many comments that were “mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations.”
Engadget columnist Michael Gartenberg expressed his discontent with the comments that followed his recent iPad editorial in a Tweet: “Amused. Bash me on @Engadget column. Suggest my parents were not married prior to birth, suggest I be fruitful & multiply. enclose your CV.”
With traditional news outlets declining and enthusiast blogs like Engadget on the rise, the implications of closing comments reflect how the stampede of online discourse can sometimes be too much for even mature, full-time blogs to endure. According to Alexa, Engadget today ranks 195 in the nation and 384 in the world for Internet traffic. It recently launched mobile applications for iPhone and Blackberry. It produces its own weekly podcasts and monthly TV shows (Edited per Zack’s comment). This is a full-time media company in all respects and an influential one at that – The AFP wrote a story on Engadget’s comment disabling.
Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky explains why things got out of hand in a Tweet: “I don’t think it’s about the class of the readership, it’s about scale.”
Scale is certainly an issue, but it shouldn’t excuse community behavior. Especially for a technology site like Engadget, you’d think that its die-hard community would be populated by primarily educated (either by trade or academically) and at least civil readers. Surely most are, but what caused Engadget to call “time-out” demonstrates how online media-enabled free speech can unveil the worst in us.
Defamatory or threatening reader feedback is nothing new. Print media has dealt with it from the beginning (and the feedback inspired new publications with alternative views), but there was some effort required to write the letter and put it in the mail. Editors had choices about what they wanted to publish. On the contrary, online media provides a fantastic opportunity for people to share their thoughts and opinion with little barrier – Just ID yourself with a pseudonym, write your thoughts and they will be published immediately. Instead of rising to the occasion of opportunity, participants in a massive community like Engadget have failed over and over: Engadget also shut off comments in 2005; competitor Gizmodo warned its readers against poor commenting practices in October 2009. (Thanks to Gizmodo’s Wilson Rothman for clarifying that they have never turned off comments.) Surely some of this is due to spammers, but some of it is also due to the immature. Both threaten productive, democratic discourse.
I don’t blame Engadget for taking drastic actions. I don’t know if it was the only way to settle the circus, but it seems to be effective so far. The unfortunate lesson here is that the good comes with the bad. Yes, we have more opportunity than ever to express our opinions in online media, but not all of us exercise the best judgment or honor the opportunities that are afforded to us.
Sure, we’re talking about a tech blog today, but as we progress toward more transparent, democratic discussions online for other topics – politics, education, healthcare – we have to consider if it’s worth a scenario where the comments can’t just be turned off.
Paolo Mottola is a UWMCDM student and digital comms extraordinaire at PR firm Weber Shandwick. He can be found @paolojr and at his personal blog, Word Is Born.
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14 Comments, Comment or Ping
hrhmedia
I suspected the iPad drove the lack of civility. Comments on Engadget always get heated whenever a post is Apple-related. The cup runneth over on the iPad. And Gartenberg (who’s frankly hit or miss in his writing), really riles folks up.
I’m just glad they switched the comments back on again. The site wasn’t half as interesting without them (nor useful).
The bigger question: what’s going to bring more civility to the web? Less anonymity? Healthier, more cohesive communities? A realization that how we express ourselves online should be akin to how we express ourselves offline? Education?
Feb 4th, 2010
Wilson Rothman
Nice piece, but you need to correct the statement about Gizmodo. We NEVER turned off comments. It was never even discussed. In fact, the story linked to above is simply an admonition to our commenters to do a better job. We address them a lot, and it helps.
We respect Engadget’s decision to turn off comments, but our system is set up to better defend against trolls. Here, you can read all about it.
Feb 4th, 2010
paolo
Wilson, thanks for the comment and clarification. I have amended the article accordingly to reflect the inaccuracy.
Feb 4th, 2010
Kathy Gill
Thanks for the food for thought, Paolo, but I disagree. What follows is a contrarian view.
(1) Several people commented, post-suspension, that Engadget allowed anonymous comments. I don’t know if that was true, but the way the Engadget FAQ currently reads (“We need your email address so you can create a profile in our system and become a member of our community”), it appears that these were valid criticisms of Engadget’s management system.
This one thing — allowing anonymous comments — probably contributed more to uncivil behavior than scale. Scale, by itself, is not a problem. Behavior that has no consequences? That’s a problem.
(2) Even now, although you’re supposed to need to login or create an account before commenting, two of the four people commenting on the first post (about Deutsch Telecom) are *unverified*. This is not the way to maintain civility, because the person is for all intents and purposes, anonymous. Anonymity = behavior without consequences.
[See screen grab: http://skitch.com/kegill/nu4wp/engadget-comments
What does “unverified” mean? From the FAQ: You have “left a comment without having first set a username.”
What? Why would the system let you do that? I mean, you just told us that you have to “create a profile” in order to comment.
“This is most likely because you were an Engadget commenter on the old system, and you have not logged out or cleared your cookies since the new system was implemented. To select a username, simply log out of the site and log back in — the system will then ask you to select a username.”
Cookies, as we all know, have expiration dates. Why is Engadget using the same cookies? Why didn’t Engadget ask its dev team to force a log-off?
(3) Finally, comments are not on by default at the moment. I just went to Engadget (note, I am not a regular reader) and clicked “discuss” on the top story. I was momentarily confused, as there was no comment box and the message I saw began … “Comments are currently turned off.” I did a double take and then realized that … “You can enable them by clicking “on” above.”. Where the heck is “on”? My eye did a scan, scan, scan – oh, there it is.
I have no idea why Engadget has implemented this speed bump when it is allowing people to post anonymously (at least in the eyes of the world). Seems very odd.
In sum, I disagree that the problem Engadget faced with uncivil behavior lies solely at the feet of the “community.” IMO, Engadget did not have a community, because anonymity is antithetical to community. A community “policies itself” (see Slashdot, for example) but how do you exert peer pressure on anonymous accounts? You can’t.
(I’m gonna x-post this comment at http://wiredpen.com/ – it’s too long not to!)
Feb 4th, 2010
Thom
Hmm, I don’t think it has to do with lack of maturity. From my observations and understanding, maturity tends to denote refinement and later developmental stages. People reacting with their preferences could easily simply be expressing those refinements. What clues me in to this is when they are fixated on right/wrong, state their belief, and then claims anyone and everyone are wrong.
They are comfortable with what they “know”, they have matured through their experiences and figured everything out, and that’s why everybody else is wrong.
As such, I’ve been thinking it’d be nice to have less maturity, people who still questioned and weren’t so sure of themselves. Unfortunately, there is little tolerance for not knowing or for making mistakes. Until that changes, until people in our culture aren’t stigmatized from being ridiculed for being wrong or not knowing, people are going to mirror that ridicule and disdain back and forth amongst each other.
It’s incongruous to relate it just to teenagers or younger folks when it clearly has been demonstrated in older adults (either intellectualized or slang phrasing), and I dare say are the source, the role models. It’s not for lack of age, but instead the accumulated experiences over time and the ridiculing attitudes that are then mirrored and refined through maturation.
I think we need to encourage the value of immaturity, of questioning and listening, but by being the living examples so there will be an alternative for others to mirror and replicate. The MyPolls app on Facebook is loaded with this type of intolerance and hatred, but I”m doing what I can to remind myself to sincerely query and not sound like I’m proving people wrong, to just state my thoughts and without making it personal of them.
Asking thoughtful questions without explicitly making a point means they have to think it out themselves, they have to imagine it, and that seems to have prompted people to turn themselves around at times. Or rather, they shift to a more neutral position or more tolerant to different ideas, if slightly. I don’t change their mind, I just try to keep things on topic and make sure my side of the discussion is only personal to me and doesn’t reference them other than to ask for clarification. IOW, I’m refusing to fight fire with fire.
In essence, I think disagreements arise because the statements we all make haven’t been thought out as much as could be, and having to clarify or rephrase them get’s us all to a different understanding than we had before, even if it’s still individual and subtly agreeing-to-disagree. Yet, that’s not so easy to address when inundated with a lot of spontaneous reactions in easy to post comments. As someone recently posited (Seattle Times reader who still handwrites letters to them), having to write a letter by hand encouraged review and some rewrites, and it has to be physically mailed and so it’s lingers longer and is thought about more before getting sent.
Hmm, maybe a probational period for new people before a comment is posted? After a day, an email is sent to the person with their comment asking them if they still want it posted. If so, they click on the link and are taken to the page where they can make further edits (i.e. rewrite now that they’ve had time to think about it, but don’t state it like that) before completing the posting. After maybe a hundred posts like that, the waiting-for-a-day-before-posting becomes a preference they can turn off. Maybe even have it gradually lessen, say maybe decrease 2 hours every 10 posts, so they are continuously making progress and it seems less restrictive.
However, all the posts made in one day (or waiting period) might ought to be treated the same so someone can’t go through all 100 posts in two days. So no more than ten posts per wait period will count towards their progress, making about 11 days for an energetic commenter if each period drops by 2 hours as suggested. Otherwise, it could be as long as hundred days. Hmm, maybe a lower number instead. Well, think about it.
In other words, it’s a way to encourage self-moderation. Surely it could be implemented in a way it won’t appear as a blatant accusation of anyone of being inferior. People who are already signed up could be started at the halfway mark as an acknowledgement.
Just be sure to alert them each time they reach the next level of decreased wait time, and in between those merely indicate the number of posts out of a hundred without making a big deal. Basic, not too much extra info in the email returning the comment to them for review so it’s easy to tell something is different at the key points of change, and keeps them informed of their progress. The final email at 100/100 congratulates (or informs) them on having a new preference setting for an automatic wait time, if they so choose to set it. Otherwise, it’s set to zero at that point.
Well, just an idea.
Feb 4th, 2010
Zack
Small clarification:
Engadget has a weekly podcast (most of the time) and the Engadget Show (video) is approximately once a month.
Feb 4th, 2010
Luis Antezana
Great comments here, at least!
I’m in the camp that believes anonymity is one of the enablers of unseemly commenting. Direct attribution to a poster’s active online identity would go a long way in reducing trolling and other unwanted behavior.
It’s extremely simple for engadget to enable such attribution through the use of any of a number of hybrid onboarding systems, such as Facebook Connect, Twitter ID, and Google ID, which would all tie a user’s comments to a more meaningful identity.
Sure the determined can set up dummy accounts there, too, but I believe the incentive is created to have your own words mean something, beyond just creating an obvious liability to behave correctly.
Luis Antezana
Methodologie
Feb 4th, 2010
Kathy Gill
Luis, good point about OpenID, FBC, TwitterID, GoogleID.
Nope, engadget wants you to create YetAnotherAccount just for their site. I’m guessing that’s AOL’s decision, but I think it’s a poor one.
Feb 5th, 2010
paolo
@Kathy Thanks for diving into the details of Engadget’s identification systems. I agree that the administrators of the site have a responsibility to maintain the civility of its comment systems. My post just sought to make the point that it’s too bad the editors thought they had to shut down comments to do so. That action indicated a high volume of poor dialogue, which doesn’t reflect well on the public’s ability to act productive and civil when given the platform to do so. On the contrary to your last graph, I still stand to believe that Engadget does have a community.While not all, a lot of people have registered on Engadget with valid identifications. Engadget monitors and deletes plain defamatory comments, just like a lot of sites do. It’s certainly not a complex community but it’s a place where mass quantities of people come to read and interact and there’s a standard for behavior. That’s an online community to me.
@Luis, I agree that eliminating anonymous comments would improve the quality of the community. However, I don’t assume that only anonymous commentators were at fault for the flame throwing, and I’ll be curious to see how the community behaves when Engadget has all of its identification systems updated. Time will tell.
@Thom, I didn’t mean to use “immature” to describe the young and inexperienced, who I agree have an absolute right and opportunity to share their perspectives, diversify the conversation and learn. I really meant “immature” to describe those who behave well below their potential. I really like the second half of your post. It alludes to the “old way” of providing feedback to media through a probationary period. I don’t know if that pace would stifle the discourse (because news would move faster than comments could keep up with, and responses to comments would likely be too disconnected by time), but I think the general idea that providing more opportunity for self-moderation is a good one.
Feb 5th, 2010
Kathy Gill
I think Thom’s idea of probation has merit, but not on a per-comment basis. I think Paolo is right that it would inhibit “speech” and it would certainly be a headache for moderators.
Where I think the idea has merit is on initial account creation. It’s very common on political sites to have a 24 hour or 48 hour “waiting period” (cooling off period?) between setting up a profile and having posting privileges. I believe Newsvine used this “forced wait” to its advantage when the site was in beta, also.
Given that Mac/PC “discussion” is often similar to a religious or political discussion (emotions and hyperbole!), this “wait before you post” could be an effective speed bump when you have big stories like the iPad. “Big” stories bring readership, many first-timers; first-timers don’t yet know what the community mores might be. Asking them to wait 24 hours to chime in increases the odds that they might pick up some understanding or at least not be able to sabotage the site with drive-by comments.
Paolo, thanks for the background on Engadget’s moderation policy. Like I said, I’m not a regular reader. I totally agree with “moderate after” — that is, remove offensive material rather than approve each comment. We really really need software that can do semantic analysis on the fly and “flag” questionable comments before they can go live. One day. Maybe.
Feb 6th, 2010
Greg Rasa
Paolo, we wrestle with these problems on a daily basis at my job, on seattletimes.com. We set up commenting on our site a couple of years ago — the classic switch from the old one-way transmission model to true reader conversations. What did we discover about this new, um, community?
– Commenters can turn any thread into a political diatribe. The story could have nothing, nothing, nothing to do with politics, and all at once we’re reliving the war crimes of the Bush administration or Kenya-born Obama is subverting American greatness.
– Set up any TOS you want, and it scarcely matters. On a dime, comments can devolve into ad hominem insults, or worse. They’ll be profane or crude, they’ll push the boundaries, they have no shame. Especially in certain specific topic areas: Stories involving suicide (we’ve learned the hard way that we have to disable comments on those from the outset); stories involving someone who is overweight; any kind of hard-luck story about, say, a familiy that has been through foreclosure (it was their own fault, don’t you know, and from their photo they look like lazy bums); immigrants (no matter how they got here, they have to be illegal); and anything involving people of color (don’t be fooled: Racism is alive and well in America).
– Our comments are peer-policed. If enough people report an abusive comment, it comes down. At which time commenters immediately blame us, not their peers, and accuse us of selectively censoring comments to fit a political agenda. If that happens and we attempt to join the discussion to explain why/how a comment was removed, it seldom calms the waters. Their peers’ role in their ouster goes over their heads.
– Based on the number of comments posted by some individuals (hundreds of posts from many, thousands from some), these folks have too much time on their hands! You do have to wonder why the frequent fliers keep coming back to this one form of self-expression.
– Despite all the aforementioned ugliness, occasionally a commenter can make a point or add a detail that truly helps round out a story. For all the juvenile behavior, there are some smart people out there.
– And often, commenters, freed from any need to maintain journalistic evenhandedness, can offer up one pithy observation that rings true and sums a story up pretty nicely.
Commenting has been a matter of consternation for our reporters, who often feel protective of their story subjects after seeing some perfectly innocent folks get pilloried in the comments. We also worry that this creates a chilling effect on those who we might want to use as subjects. Meanwhile, we get about a million page views a month from commenting (out of typically 50 million-plus total for the site). We are still struggling internally with the question of how much reader commenting helps us vs. how much it damages our brand. It’s an ongoing conversation.
If you ask me, it’s all about anonymity. If they didn’t have that, they wouldn’t say terrible things — after all, they’d never say that sort of thing to someone face-to-face. Anonymity facilitates that Northwest passive-aggressive streak. It strips away the civilized facade some folks maintain, and reveals what’s underneath. That’s pretty awful, but it’s also intriguing from an anthropological standpoint, y’know? Leaves you wondering what’s more “real” — the civilized facade of the real world, or the virtual alter ego. …
Feb 22nd, 2010
Cheryl
Interesting topic and post.
I disagree with the idea that the Engaget audience should be presumed to be educated and therefore more civil; the Kathy Sierra incident (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6499095.stm) is just one of several examples of how the tech audiences can be the model of arrogance and incivility online.
Greg’s comments about the Seattle Times all ring true for me as a former member of the Salon.com commenting community– anonymity, while a problem, was not the sole source of incivility there. The problem rested more with entrenched regulars who posted hundreds of comments a week, if not a day, hammering on offensive (and usually misogynistic) agendas frequently unrelated to the post. Whatever weak policies Salon had in place to police such comments never held for very long– regulars were always back with new screen names and old agendas. I frequently felt embarrassed for the writers who were routinely insulted and sometimes threatened in the comments, and eventually stopped reading Salon altogether.
I have no easy solution, but find it curious that comments are so often considered purely a value-add proposition to online content. In Salon’s case, they drove me away from it.
Mar 1st, 2010
Sam
It’s interesting how comments are changing or influencing online media and its readers in different conditions. In USA the comments options is considered as a indicator of openness and democracy and reflects opinions and lusts of online community.
But let’s consider less democratic countries like post-soviet Kyrgyzstan, for instance. There was one case that had the same problem – local news agency AKIpress.com in the past had widely popular comments service. It was opportunity for many people to express not only opinion but often just inform society and journalists about additional details or new facts of a news story. Many things were telling truth that government or companies are trying to hide in every possible way. It was tool to bring democracy through online community to real world. Unfortunately, after some calls and hints from government the comments were transformed in registration based system. It totally changed or killed comments on AKIpress though it didn’t decrease the news agency’s popularity.
Comments are very good indicator of problems or situation in a society. And also they can help to attain democracy though it doesn’t mean there will be no problems.
Mar 14th, 2010
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