Do you need a comment thread? And can you make it more civilised?
In this post Alex Hayes talks about the evolution of comments threads and how they can develop as earners if utilised effectively.
The cases for and against comment threads on websites are many and varied. At best those user-generated words at the bottom of a page can add insight and stir debate. At worst they’re a troll-filled cesspit turning normally civilised people into rabid lunatics.
So why would publishers have comment sections?
Well from a purely commercial perspective, often commenters are a website’s most loyal readers.
Speaking on a panel at SXSW in Austin last week, Greg Barber, director of digital projects for The Washington Post, explained: “People who participate in our comment streams and people who read comments are your most loyal users.
“They come back more often, consume more of your pages, are more likely to engage with you in ways that can lead to subscriptions to going to live events.”
Barber has also been running The Coral Project, a study into comment sections and the way publishers engage with them, which has included hundreds of interviews and several commenter panels.
Greg Barber: Problems occur when you ignore the comments thread
Barber warned the lack of attention given to these spaces by news sites is what is causing many of the problems.
“What could give users the idea that as journalists this is a space we’ve forgotten about?,” he asked. “Why would they think that? Well there’s this space at the bottom of a page which has nothing around it and nothing that goes on there really gets highlighted someplace else.
“If those were the factors then it makes sense to a user that it’s the wild west and nobody’s paying any attention or enforcing rules.”
He adds: “How do we actually move forward as brands and get users to read us, subscribe to us, support our advertisers? It’s by making connections with users. Learning about why they participate with us, even when our tools are so bad. Make the tools better and you’ll bring in more people.
“That’s the thing you can’t get from social media – social media’s news feeds are just news feeds – but when you come to a news site and interact with us you’re interacting with us as people.
“Users can be sources, users can propel us in different directions and users can tell stories. There are real business cases for this.”
Ultimately for Barber engaging with commenters is about a journalist actually building a community and nurturing their own audience.
Stroud: “Commenters are really affected by the architecture of the section”
So how can publishers actually make the most of their comment threads?
Talia Stroud, head of the Engaging News Project at the University of Texas, shared a few trials which they had found had worked.
Comment section layout
“Commenters are really affected by the architecture of the comment section,” says Stroud.
Most comment sections are just one column of comments. Stroud’s team trialled using three different columns – one where people agree with a comment, one to disagree and one to answer questions.
“We evaluated this and found more people engaged in the comment section. You could spark some more comments by switching to that architecture,” she adds.
Frame the debate
Another trialled tactic was including information for and against a particular topic, detailing how people feel on two sides of the issue.
“With just this little bit of information from people more people participated in the comment section,” says Stroud, pointing to it also becoming more civil as a result.
Respect Button
While several comment systems allow people to up vote or ‘like’ various comments Stroud’s team experimented with adding a ‘respect’ button – allowing people to say ‘I respect your point of view’ whilst not necessarily agreeing with it.
“People were more likely to respect comments they disagree with politically than they otherwise would have said they liked,” she says.
Journalists engaging with readers
Stroud conducted an experiment getting journalists to get into the habit of engaging with the comment threads on their stories.
Three different methods were trialled including an anonymous moderator, another journalist and a well-known political reporter jumping in to different threads.
“What we found was when a political reporter from the site got involved the incivility declined by around 15%, and people were about 15% more likely to provide evidence for their claims,” she adds.
“It’s a measurable change. The reporter would say: ‘have you got any questions?’ or ‘Here’s a link to that bill’, and really involve fact-based information.”
Based on some of these principles the team behind The Coral Project, which is collaboration between the Mozilla Foundation, The New York Times and The Washington Post, is creating an open source platform to allow publishers of all sizes to get to grips with their commenters and help build a community. See more on it here.
You can read more about the Engaging News Project’s research on commenters here.
Alex Hayes is editor of Mumbrella
Great article – if you’re trying to compete for attention getting this dynamic working well is critical, surely.
User ID not verified.
Good piece. I write for an US-based enthusiast site with an international audience that posts 4-5 pieces a day. The amount of comments generated ranges from 20-200; every piece gets commented upon (including by the contributors).
The format is WordPress and the comment stream allows for reply to comment (indented in a slightly different shaded box) and three generations of reply to reply with successive indentation. The commenters are in many cases just as knowledgable as the contributors, and the ensuing threads make for very interesting reading as well. Given the amount of traffic on the site is about 30000 page impressions a day, the yield in comments is quite high.
I read The Guardian and NYTimes regularly, and sometimes visit the comments. The NYTimes with its side bar comment interface is a little awkward but The Guardian’s has easy to follow threads – although there is only one generation of reply to comment indentation. What I find most effective with the enthusiast website is that the comments are graphically separated by boxes. I find the free-floating comments interface less intuitive.
As to the issue of civility, The Guardian has very little interaction by the journalists and is littered with moderated (i.e. completely censored) comments. I suppose that goes with the territory. Mumbrella seems to be making a good job of it, though sometimes I wish the contributors would be more involved with comments.
User ID not verified.
I love respect buttons. I also like to be anonymous. ‘Pen names’ were rife when letters were published years ago. Some people want to give input to the conversation, however don’t want to be famous, other than others and of course unlike self promoting you know who’s…
User ID not verified.
Sold!
Oh, never mind.
User ID not verified.
Makes this comments section seem rather drab….?
User ID not verified.
Hi Peter,
You’re right – and we are working on it. Any suggestions from your own experiences?
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
The inclusion of a comment section is a very fine idea.
There should always be a moderator or a panel of moderators, to keep out the loonies and the blasphemers, and balance the self interested.
Opinion is a fine thing, and respectful commentators are a stimulating and complementary force. I like Mumbrella, therefore I like to feel a part of it, even in a very slight way.
User ID not verified.
Hurrah the industry is one step closer to recognising the value of community management!
Alex there is fantastic research being done in this area by Dr Fiona Martin at Sydney Uni. She would be worth getting in touch with: https://twitter.com/media_republik
As for building healthy, safe & welcoming online communities and comment sections, always happy to help as it is our area of expertise 🙂
User ID not verified.