May 10, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Creating a Space for Community Conversation
Or, How to Have User-Generated Content on Your Site that Facilitates Conversation and Won’t Get You Fired
It’s a question that lots of papers are struggling with - “I want to include comments and other user-generated content on my site, but I don’t want a bunch of trolls arguing, and I don’t want to get sued.”
Super Quick Non-binding Legal Overview
Your organization is considered the publisher of any *content* that is published on your site as an article - whether written by your staff or the public - and you are liable for its content, just as if you had printed it in the paper.
Generally, you are not liable for *comments* left on your site. However, if a staffer leaves a comment, and doing so can reasonably be construed as a part of their job duties, you *might* be liable. If you *edit* a comment in any way, you are responsible for the remainder of the comment’s content. And, if your organization has a specific comments policy (i.e. “No racism allowed!”) and it fails to remove a comment that violates this policy in a reasonable timeframe, you might be liable for this failure to act.
Whew.
So … legal mojo aside, how do you create a space for conversations?
Step 1: Four Cs of Creating Community Conversation
Take out a piece of paper and jot down your answers to these questions.
Community
Who are the community members you expect to contribute content? Think about your web product - is it your entire site, or a stand-alone venture like a blog? Does your entire town have something to say, or just the music fans? And who are the listeners - the ‘lurkers’ who might never contribute, but might be faithful readers?
Conflict
What kind of conflict can you imagine this audience having? How will the content on your site contribute to conflict? For example, a forum about welfare reform will attract a different type of conversation than one about the best spot in town to get sushi.
Constructive Corraling
How can you steer your community away from conflict and towards conversation? Will your community behave itself if they are all identified by their real names? Is comment moderation the answer (not publishing comments until they have been approved by a human editor)? Or will a free-wheeling “we’ll take it down if it gets really bad” approach work for your community?
Calculate Risks and Benefits
Your ‘constructive corraling’ solution will have pros and cons. Weigh them in context of your staffing realities.
- If you require folks to use their real names as a moderation device, will that prevent them from trash talking? How can you verify this?
- If you decide to moderate comments, do you have the staffing ability to review comments in real time? (A comment moderated a week later does not facilitate conversation).
- If you decide to just let the content fly, what are you risking?
Step 2: Experiment
We’re putting together a community blog for the upcoming 2007 AAN Convention at Portland2007.AAN.org. Inspired by the community blog for the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, this blog will allow any conference attendee to post an ‘article’ - which AAN will be legally liable for. Here’s how we handled the content challenge.
Example: Community Blog at Portland2007.AAN.org
Community: Our community consists of employees of AAN papers, associate members like cartoonists and software vendors, and folks who are interested in alternative media. Our listeners consist of, well, everyone - but especially folks with a beef against specific papers or individuals.
Conflict: An industry characterized by mergers, buyouts and staffing changes is full of potential sources of conflict.
Constructive Corraling: Folks might be willing to say nasty stuff anonymously, but I am making the assumption that if they are only allowed to publish using their real names, that will curtail much of the trash talking. (Hopefully?) Our constructive corraling mechanism was to moderate identity creation - that is, only allowing folks with verifiable identities to post on the blog. To create a user account, a potential author must submit a valid, verifiable email address associated with an AAN-member paper - no ihatemyoldboss@gmail.com.
Calculate Risks and Benefits: Of course, verifying an email address requires a human editor - and even the fastest editor isn’t as fast as the instant gratification of a computer. We balanced the annoying wait time against the potential pitfalls, and decided it was worth it.
So, our experimental solution to creating a space for community conversation is to require folks to use their real identities - hoping that’ll force ‘em to play nice.
Step 3: Listen and Adjust
No matter how well thought out your solution is, it’s important to realize that you are herding cats. Listen to your users - what they think about your technical setup, what they think about the conversations that happen on the site, and more importantly, to the conversations themselves.
In that spirit, what do you think of the technical solution? Have we played the 4 Cs of Creating Community Conversation correctly? What tactics have you tried?
Tags: comments, community, conversation, legal, user generated content
Matt Writt:
May 11, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Nice post. Definitely covers the can-of-worms you open with reader comments.
I will say that I disagree somewhat with the negative light cast on “conflict” versus “conversation.” Conversations involving conflict are compelling, not only for those posting, but the “lurkers” (non-posting readers). When people get riled up, they check back on their posts, repost, and direct their like-minded friends to join the argument. In other words, TRAFFIC.
I’ve taken it upon myself to create an alter ego who posts comments, often with the intention of stirring up a debate. It’s great fun to read a set of comments that are mostly in consensus and rock the boat a bit.
I say all this with the cover-my-ass grain of salt that you don’t want TOO much conflict to the point of boiling over, and the Constructive Corraling suggestions are right-on. At the end of the day, too much conflict takes all the fun out of it.
I’m eager to see comments from other papers with comment-enabled sites, hopefully with some examples of successes and shortcomings.
As for Memphisflyer.com, we had our best week of web traffic EVER because of comments. Earlier this year, Bishop G.E. Patterson unfortunately passed away. He was an enormously respected figure in Memphis because of his leadership in the Church of God In Christ. There were folks from across the country flocking to our site to leave a comment sending best wishes, telling stories, offering condolences, etc. The article reporting his death received over 100 comments in a short time. In this situation, a sad event gathered the community around the memory of a man, and our comment section became a destination and a resource for his mourners.
I recall a somewhat recent article from Creative Loafing Atlanta that sparked a racially-charged debate in their comments…. would love to hear from someone close to the situation about their policy decisions in the subsequent uproar.
Again, great post. Looking forward to the responses.
Matt Writt
Memphisflyer.com
cresmer:
May 14, 2007 at 10:47 am
We should have comments up and running on our articles in a few months. We’ve been wanting to do it forever, but have been held back by our CMS. In our new system, we’ve discussed disabling comments on stories after a couple weeks, to cut down on the bots, and on the work of monitoring everything.
Anybody else shut down commenting after a period of time?
I also wanted to respond to something Matt said above:
“I’ve taken it upon myself to create an alter ego who posts comments, often with the intention of stirring up a debate. It’s great fun to read a set of comments that are mostly in consensus and rock the boat a bit.”
I was a little surprised to read this. It’s tempting to try something like this to stir up debate, but it seems dishonest, and ultimately counter-productive because it could potentially undermine readers’ trust in the system. We don’t allow our employees to comment anonymously on our blogs, or on our restaurant review site.
Any other thoughts about this out there?
Alejandro Leal:
May 14, 2007 at 11:08 am
Hi this is Alejandro from Creative Loafing.
Yes, we did have a situation with a series of articles that dealt with race and the subsequent discussion that was generated.
As of now, our policy is open, anyone can come to the site and post a comment once they’ve correctly input a CAPTCHA security code. This allows for anonymity, and, as we’ve recently learned, for frequent commenters who’ve become a real dilemma. Even though they provide legitimate arguments, they do so with exaggerated language (very racist at times), for the sake of simply presenting a purported “opposing” view to that of the article they comment on.
But to comment on the specific situation I believe Matt is referring to, one of our staff writers, Mara Shalhoup, wrote a three-part series on the Black Mafia Family entity. A group whose members have been accused of drug trafficking, most of which are African-American individuals. As you can imagine, the themes in the story touched a very delicate nerve in the community and some comments went beyond what we deemed were “constructive” for the discussion. Our decision was to remove those comments we felt were overtly racist, offensive, or those that did not add anything else to what was being talked about.
Since these stories were done in a multi-part series, we had quite a technical challenge. How to monitor at least six different stories that had upwards of 75 comments each?
In the end, we decided to close comments on all but one of the articles, directing users to the open thread, which is still open to date.
Our philosophy has always been of open dialogue, and we try to wait until the last minute to push the delete button. We do not edit any comments to stay away from any possible liability, and for comments we deem unwarranted, we simply purge them from the system.
Fortunately, our staffers are attuned to the risks whenever we publish a story on a sensitive subject and they monitor the site relatively well. If we find something we object to, we discuss it internally, and make a decision. Likewise, if any of our readers contacts us concerning abuse or a comment they may find offensive, we do the same.
Unfortunately, our open system allows for abuse, and some people (same people) do it on a daily basis.
We’ve been able to stay away from stricter moderating tools, but the reality that at any time abusers can overwhelm the system (and the staff), has forced us to think of some alternatives, like “flag this as abuse” tags and such.
To read the BMF series and its comments, go to:
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/bmf
Alejandro Leal
Online Producer
Creative Loafing Media
Roxanne Cooper:
May 14, 2007 at 11:14 am
Related:
This WaPo editorial on bloggity anonymity is causing a bit of a stir in Left Blogistan this morning. See here and here for examples.
Matt Writt:
May 14, 2007 at 3:56 pm
I think the response to my post highlights an interesting issue: Should staffers be required to use their real names when commenting on their paper’s articles?
Since I’m not a writer, our readers wouldn’t recognize my real name even if I were to post comments as Matt Writt. Therefore, what harm is there in using a pseudonym? In other words, my real name is just as anonymous as my fake name. And unless my alter ego is either relentless in stirring debate or inconsistent in positions taken on issues, how would this anonymity engender mistrust?
(While my alter ego and I are fairly low key in commenting, I do conceed that this sort of rabble-rousing doppleganger could potentially harm a site if over-used or employed inappropriately.)
Conversely, one of our writers, Chris Davis, often checks on his own articles to weigh-in on subsequent debates using his real name. (An example from last week’s Flyer.)
In this situation, it makes good sense for Chris to speak as the writer of the article responding to his readers. BUT when he’s commenting as “Chris Davis,” is he Chris Davis the Flyer writer, Chris the independent blogger, or someone else entirely?? What if he says something in a comment that would never pass muster of the editorial chain of command? I can foresee situations where writers might want to weigh-in without the oh-so-heavy mantle of their editorial integrity to consider. Or are writers never allowed to speak freely?
Very interesting issues to consider.
Matt Writt
Memphisflyer.com
PS, thanks to Alejandro for chiming in. That was precisely the situation to which I was referring, and I’m glad you could provide details.
cresmer:
May 15, 2007 at 7:57 am
I’m reluctant to ban anonymous comments from readers. On the other hand, it seems unwise to allow newspaper employees to comment on stories anonymously.
When stories have lots of comments, it means that people are talking about them. It’s a way of measuring their impact, measuring peoples’ interest in them. Having our employees commenting on our stories anonymously gives us (and our readers) a false impression of the value of our content. It seems manipulative to me. I think if employees want to comment, they should use their real names.