Last month, I wrote a column, "Online commenting system has room for improvement," (CT, Feb. 6) detailing the concerns the CT is facing regarding our online commenting system.
Recently we received a letter signed by numerous faculty and staff members calling for a stricter policy regarding online commenting, referencing offensive comments under stories pertaining to violence against women.
To the writers and cosigners of the letter: We are paying attention to your request. This week, I sat down with our editor-in-chief to discuss possible solutions to this problem.
Several options for improving the commenting system were brought onto the playing field: requiring commenters to be registered users of the site, prohibiting anonymous commenting and hiring an editor to remove comments flagged as offensive.
We never considered removing the commenting system entirely. Comments are multi-functional for us. They help me find errors in stories that need correction, sometimes provide interesting leads for new stories, but most of all comments spark healthy debate among our readership and increase awareness of important issues around campus.
We explored our options regarding regulation. Creating a registration system would not fix the problem of accountability; instead it would create new problems. Last month, this seemed like a viable option to hold people accountable for their remarks.
There were plenty of benefits and detriments to registration. For example, forcing readers to register before commenting would discourage a lot of flippant commentary. Those who are truly interested in debating the issues and voicing their opinions wouldn't mind signing up, and those who are just there to draw obscene emoticons won't bother. Theoretically we could track abusive commenters by their screen names. But when we thought about it, we realized there was no way to make sure that people were who they claimed to be.
It would be just as easy for me to register as Frank Beamer or some other made-up screen name claiming to be someone else and create a fake e-mail address and alias that sent all registration mail to my real account. Essentially, there is no way for us to make sure that people are actually being held accountable for their comments when it's so easy to fake it.
We recognize that improving the commenting system is important; however, at this current moment in time we have made commitments to focusing our students' energy on yet unfinished projects.
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I applaud you for your objective and honest evaluation of this seriously sensitive and philosophical issue. On the other hand, please ignore the complaints of those faculty; they sound like the same power-grabbing ones who try to regulate every action of their students in the classroom, and have no place in discussions like this. The value of open discussion, as you've noted, is beyond critical in personal development, and the 'flag' system will work fine if used to 'censor.'
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Anyone who has run a blog knows if you don't want any comments by trolls, flamers, kooks, etc, you might as well shut off all comments. As a moderator you delete blatantly offensive comments, but you can't monitor it all the time. There are "troll" rating systems with only registered users but they are complicated and they discourage debate. Its best not to respond to a troll (difficult I know) since they just want attention. http://www.consumersavvytips.org/avoiding_an_internet_troll.html
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This could be done by only having users with @vt.edu email accounts register and eliminate anonymity, but then non-VT people couldn't add their opinion. Also, anonymity is good for articles discussing issues like marijuana possession penalties. No one would be able to openly admit to smoking pot in their argument if they can't use a pseudonym.
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The principles of community is a non-binding statement to which no member of the campus community, to my knowledge, is required to adhere. Further, the principles of community cannot be binding on people who aren't part of the campus community to begin with. From my standpoint, this is a pretty easy 'if you can't stand the heat' sort of situation. Commenters being rude to you on the forums? Reading postings you consider to be inappropriate? There's a pretty simple solution - just don't read the forums. There is no right to freedom from insult or offense - and while I'd hope that those who comment on these forums would try to do so tastefully, I'm not going to stand in their way if they want to be abusive.
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Take a cue from Gawker: "We're looking for comments that are interesting, substantial or highly amusing. If your comments are excessively self-promotional, obnoxious, or even worse, boring, you will be banned from commenting."
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Not exactly sure what the policy on privacy is, but Id just record the ip address of the commenter (really easy in PHP) and if you keep seeing offensive comments coming up from that IP, ban the IP. It wont solve the problem completely but it will take some of the steam away from people who sit at work or home and troll the comments. Im sure theyll be much less likely to say that stuff when they find that most of the computers they normally use have been banned from posting comments. Again, its not a solution, but its a deterrent.
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No further explanation required. ,
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