THE William Rukeyser? Wow!

As for comments and their relationship to traffic, I think 50,000 comments would have a fair bit to do with a couple of million page views per month. At RoaneViews it looks like comments drive traffic as people who don't comment still want to keep up with discussions.

The important number is discreet viewers, though, and I think allowing nasty comments to drive discussions seems to drive folks away, not increase traffic.

Yes, on all those points.

ETA: The challenge is to "manage" (for lack of a better word) the conversation so that it adds value instead of subtracts. And for the record, you do an excellent job of that at RoaneViews. In fact, you should have been there last night.

I'm glad to hear they are addressing this and equally glad to see they invited you to participate.

Good report, and I'm glad the KNS and APME are addressing this topic.

I wasn't a party to this discussion, so a genuinely direct, honest conversation about on line posting may have taken place last night. I hope so.

Particularly as it pertains to the Sentinel, the real dichotomy here is the struggle between content quality and traffic. The harsh reality is that the more outrageous, salacious and offensive a discussion becomes, the more people seem to be drawn to it. We all react in abject horror at the racism, misogyny and vitriol that people spew, but we read it nonetheless. When we do so, we represent numbers that are vitally important to a sales force struggling to survive, employed by a company trying to find a sustainable business model.

No easy answers here, no quick fixes.

Dwight Van de Vate
Chief Administrative Officer
Knox County Mayor's Office

Notice that the KNS site requires registration and sign-in to comment. I would like to see sign-in required in order to view the comments.

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As one of the moderators and co-founders of School Matters, I know that this is a difficult issue, but I believe that there are ways to deal with comments that get out of hand without totally shutting down conversations. It's up to the site operators to make and enforce civility rules.

Our group made a conscious decision to encourage productive dialogue by making and enforcing some ground rules that we really stick to. We prohibit personal attacks or posts that are defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. It requires active moderation to enforce the policies, but we have a lot less problems than one would guess after people figure out that we mean business.

We also encourage (although we don't require) people to use their real names. I have found that people who use their real names online are much less likely to engage in this type of behavior. We do allow anonymous speech, but posters are still required to follow site rules.

The conversations at School Matters, while admittedly limited to education issues only, still covers controversial topics (like the Bill Phillips incident) but with more civility than at other sites. It's more work, but worth it, in my opinion, and I think the site is far better off for it. And we still have pretty good numbers in terms of readership, without all the inflammatory and garbage posts that turn off people who are interested in engaging in civil conversations.

Myself I've never been into a fuck you post.

Sometimes I read the new media & that's my first reaction.

Then I take breath & hopefully create a post
that gets my point across without being vitriolic.

But the new media allows individuals to have
instant reaction to the subject at hand.

That's the beauty & the beast of the new media.

How does one promote free expression on topics that by
nature are hotly debated & ones views are held as inviolable?

One example is the debate with respect to the recently held
TEA parties.

Read the thread on Knoxviews & one can see what I mean.

The new media is fueled by such debate..it's what
makes it cutting edge.

But let's don't bleed to death cutting each other
up on the razor sharp edge of uncivil discourse.

The thought of Randy Neal weighing in on this topic is quite ironic, considering that his method of dealing with opposing opinion is to just shut it down - by deleting comments, blocking people and redirecting web traffic, among other tricks he pulls. Folks, R. Neal is a wuss. If the conversation is not going his way, he shuts it down. "Speech is free, as long as you agree" - right, Randy? Especially if you can't back up what you say with those inconvenient fact thingies. What a joke you are!

Odd that the News-Sentinel would sponsor such a forum. To be cutting edge they would have conducted the town-hall online.

But online it is hard to control and direct the discussion. Gosh, people might say things the pair of Jacks do not care for. Not going to have that!

The News-Sentinel cares little for intelligent discussion on this issue. If they did the Jacks would address multiple questions about removing, hiding, and otherwise restricting access to certain posts. This discussion is available right on the editors blog--but only silence from Jack.

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/editor/2008/12/comments_love_em_and_hate_e...

Here is part of the discussion:

Seems Mr. Lail, Editor at KnoxNews, suffers from a double standard concerning postings.

When he moderates a discussion board affiliated with the Society of Professional Journalists, geared toward Investigative Reporters and Editors, his policy is summed up quite nicely:

"...Lail, the director of the online media division of the Knoxville News-Sentinel, prefers a "loose hand." He intervenes only "when they get after each other personally.""

"I really wish there was some intelligence filter," Lail says. "People are like lemmings. Some of them can't help but follow some nut off some path."

To read more on this topic visit The Columbia Journalism Review at http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/99/1/discussion.asp. This is where the above quotes come from.

KnoxNews reviews and simply "disappears" some on-topic posts. These appear to be disappeared for political bias. Such behavior is not tolerated on the professional journalist blogs Mr. Lail volunteers to moderate.

The first line of the CJR story is quite instructive: "Internet discussion lists are supposed to serve as sanctuaries, virtual communities where people with similar interests can talk shop. That's true for journalists, who have a wide range of places to connect with each other online."

For additional questions about comments check out Jack's Blog at:

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/editor/2008/12/readership_is_not_the_probl...

Note how the Jacks do not respond to tough, well researched, documented questions. Instead they hold tightly-controlled town-hall meetings.

Most of the criticism I've received revolves around the "loose hand" issue.

We've tried to encourage robust conversation, but much of it often drifts into personal attacks, bigotry, unsubstantiated and often libelous rumors, and the just inane. We're also struggling with the sheer volume comments to manage.

We are trying to limit the stuff, that as William Rukeyser said, "subtracts from the sum of human knowledge."

I do have an agenda, albeit not a politically charged one. I want users our Web sites to comment within the bounds of these guidelines.

"Be nice - If you want your comment gems to survive, you won't defame, threaten or be abusive to other readers or the subjects of our stories. Victims have feelings too. Out of concern for them, we may not allow comments on certain stories.

"Keep it clean - This is a public forum, open to civil adults and children who do not appreciate your vulgarities or obscenities.

"Be responsible - Comments are the sole responsibility of those who post them. You'll have no one else to blame if you don't preview your comment carefully and think it through before clicking "submit."

"You are deputized - Police these comment threads. If you see a comment that violates the rules, click "Suggest removal" to flag that comment for further review by our staff.

"There are consequences - Rules violators may be banned from commenting.

"Ask questions, share your knowledge, and help us get the story right - If you are aware of a factual error in a story, want to share facts or background information you know about the story, or think there are issues we should follow up on, e-mail our local news desk."

I might be overestimating humanity, but I don't think that's a very high bar.

If you can't do that, hopefully, we'll notice and remove your comment. If you consistently can't meet that standard, we'll ban your user login from commenting.

Are we hiding comments? If "removing them from view" is hiding, then we do. That is what we do with comments that can't reach the above standard.

I'm not sure what my quotes in your post illustrate other than to accurately reflect my views on online comments. In addition to being quoted here and there, I've written a bit about comments if you care to read what I've written: http://www.jacklail.com/blog/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=10&tag=comments&limit=20

Through the help of our excellent Roundtable participants, we'll find some more intelligent ways to keep the community conversation in our comments out of the ditches.

We'll be launching a broader online conversation about comments soon; watch for it. There's been some great discussion here as well that we're obviously paying attention too.

Comment management is an evolving process.

Essentially, the online edition(s) of the Knoxville News Sentinel, KnoxNews.com, selectively removes reader posts which are within published guidelines for comments.

These removals seem to be biased toward large commercial advertising accounts and pet projects of the newspaper publisher and/or editor.

An example of pet community projects being given special attention by the editor would involve United Way of Greater Knoxville. The KNS Editor, Mr. Bruce Hartman, was campaign chair of the United Way 2007 drive. The 2008 campaign has had difficulty reaching goal, in fact, for the first time in KUW's history the campaign had to be extended into the New Year. That late campaign was still underway and raising funds.

The newspaper, and web site, has been running numerous puff pieces designed to build support for the KUW campaign. These stories have been granted prime real-estate on both the print and web editions--being placed as front page, above the fold, and home page web stories.

When reader comments have been attached to these promotional stories raising concerns about the financial management of United Way or suggesting KUW may not be worthy of continued support, those reader comments have been removed (or the story was buried on the web site and another--identical--puff piece was placed on a fresh page to replace the previous story and the reader comment thread was not attached to this "updated" story.)

At no point in this reporting process does the KNS or KnoxNews indicate the conflict of interest due to the past history of the Editor being campaign chair, nor is it mentioned that Amy Nolan, a writer for the KNS integrated property Greater Knoxville Business Journal, is currently on the Board of Directors of KUW.
http://www.unitedwayknox.org/board-members.shtml

Specifically, I posted an extremely brief comment which referenced and provided a link to a blue ribbon panel finding in the recent Charlotte United Way CEO pay scandal. This comment was "hidden" by KnoxNews.com staff by replacing the story with another fresh puff article which did not include my comment/link. As my initial comment was made late in the evening (after 10 pm), the effect of this move was to deny much readership to my critical comment.

I simply re posted a look-a-like comment to the new story early the next morning. This comment/link was promptly removed. As were other critical reader comments. Thus KnoxNews.com affirmed the intent to remove or hide critical comments which were well within the published standards for posting.

Another reader and commenter protested the removal of comments and later questions were poised to the KNS editor's blog requesting clarification. The editor has yet to respond to such questions.

The link I provided to the Charlotte UW debacle was quite on target. That report has been mandated as required reading for all United Way affiliates nationwide by the United Way of America umbrella governing body. In addition, it appears KUW expends a great deal of resources on travel, training, conferences, all expenditures which in a tight budget year can be reduced or eliminated. Such reduction would make it unnecessary to continue, time and time again, to extend the campaign deadline.

Such issues are not explored and reported by KNS/KnoxNews.com. They simply churn out puff/promotional pieces all the while failing to disclose conflicts of interest.

As a quick reference I provide links to the KnoxNews items below:

http://knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/18/united-way-keep-fund-raising-new-ye...
http://knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/19/united-way-prolongs-drive/
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/editor/2008/12/comments_love_em_and_hate_e...

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/editor/2008/12/readership_is_not_the_probl...

Here is a copy of my post removed by KnoxNews.com on the new morning edition United Way story:

Posted by lelandwykoff on December 19, 2008 at 8:42 a.m. Woops! Posted this comment last night and it seems to have been disappeared. Lets just try again!
Check this out:
http://www.uwcentralcarolinas.org/ima...(UWCC).pdf
United Way limps from one scandal to the next.

Bumped for update:

• Video, Part 1
• Video, Part 2

"Jack McElroy is more concerned with the journalism aspects. He says the media's role has shifted and they are no longer gatekeepers. It is now a two-way world and an interactive process, and that to remain relevant and important they must stay at the center of the dialogue."

Jack McElroy is missing the boat. By breathlessly chasing technological trends in a foolish effort to "remain relevant," he is sacrificing the actual relevance of his organization. Instead of trying desperately to be cool by remaking the Sentinel into a discussion forum, he should be committing more resources to actual journalism. With all due respect to Mr. Neal here, anybody can set up an online forum, and it doesn't cost that much to do it. And that's great; people can use that to freely express their opinions, to and fro, and that undoubtedly at least has the potential, with the obvious down-sides, to enhance free speech in an open society. But you know, it's still all just a bunch of people expressing their opinions, with significantly varying levels of knowledge to back them up.

If McElroy wants to remain relevant, he should keep 100% of his focus on hiring and keeping good reporters, and rewarding them for carefully researching and reporting the news. Instead of trying so hard to follow the crowd, McElroy should realize that the big weakness of blogs and discussion forums is the low standards of information when it comes to actual facts. Face it, without direct links to reliable sources of information, most stuff you read in forums online is no better than the stuff you hear from some guy sitting next to you at the bus stop.

Forget the stupid comments on all the knoxnews.com articles. The Sentinel should do away with them. Instead, the online version of the Sentinel could give reporters the opportunity to cover things in depth, without the column-inch limitations of the print edition. Many print articles could finish by saying, "for more details and in-depth coverage, go to Knoxnews.com," where a brief article can be supplemented by all the news that wouldn't fit in print. If McElroy's focus was actually on reporting the news, then every nickel-and-dime blog and forum would be constantly linking to his journalists' work and driving traffic to his website, because that would be the one place in town where people could expect to find solid, factual, timely reporting. Instead, his reporters get a few paragraphs that roughly equate with the print version of an article, and a bunch of yokels get to overwhelm that with thousands of words of mostly irrelevant blather.

McElroy has it exactly backwards, and until he realizes it and uses the true potential of his website, he'll just be chasing trends like a desperate teenager who never can quite stay relevant.