Category: Media

One of the saddest forms of behavior I see from blog and newspaper comments is the use of different usernames depending on whether the person is willing to stand behind their comments at the time.

On The Deets, all first-time commenter’s comments are held in moderation. This achieves three things:

First, it prevents spam comments from going live, with the exception of approved commenters who decide to get a bit too commercial down the road (rarely happens).

Second, it brings civility to the site by not providing a platform to the downright rude and offensive. They can head over to Minnesota Democrats Exposed or start their own blog if that’s how they want to behave.

And third, it throttles the comments of normally civil commenters who suddenly decide that they’re not willing to stand behind their own words.

Here is an example of this in action. A commenter who appears to reside in Fargo, ND who may be named Nick Thornton left a comment on this site that I considered to be civil back in August. I approved it. Recently, a person from the same address using a fake name commented here. That was held in moderation since he didn’t use the same name he did the first time. I approved it and responded to his comment. He left a second comment under his newly created handle, which went live right away. I responded to that as well. But then he decided to create yet another username for his next comment, which through him back into a moderation queue.

Below is a screenshot that shows the same IP address, a variety of made up usernames, and the made up email addresses he provided:

While this may be acceptible commenting behavior on some sites, I’m not a fan of it. And, this is my site, so I get to set the rules. Commenters who think this is unfair are welcome comment elsewhere or create their own blogs. By the way, if they choose to create their own blogs, consider sending trackbacks to posts you mention here. If you write at a consistent location where you’ve chosen to stand behind your own words, there is a good chance that you’ll write something worth citing within the comments here. I welcome the debate.

As I see it, you wouldn’t give a person the time of day at a party if they kept popping into conversations in different disguises, so why put up with that behavior at this online party? It seems unfair to people who are capable of acting like adults. Given a choice, I’d rather have respectable readers who are capable of leaving respectable comments. There are plenty of other homes for people who can’t live up to that standard when they’re behind a keyboard.

You’re creating more work for me and generally less value for my readers. That makes you the problem. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

By the way, the question asked in the unapproved comment was already addressed here.

Local news site, minnesota.cbslocal.com, ended up removing the hate speech they hosted for 5 hours, but in doing so, created a new problem that’s common among websites using reactionary comment moderation policies. Take a look at the comments now:

The first comment is a pingback from TLD30.com, followed by my comment, and then the pingback to my previous post on The Deets. (Many blocks include a feature called Trackbacks, where the sites will automatically alert other sites that you’ve written about them. This triggers those sites to add a link back to the commentary in the form of a pingback.)

The issue here is that my comment no longer makes sense on minnesota.cbslocal.com since the comment it refers to is now missing. minnesota.cbslocal.com did not leave any hint that they deleted the hate speech they had hosted for 5 hours.

I now have no ability to clean up that comment, received no alert that a comment I commented about had been removed, etc. There was no “engaging of the engagers” either (whatever that means).

One mess led to another.

If a minnesota.cbslocal.com employee could erase my comment, that would be great. Let’s work together to make minnesota.cbslocal.com better.

This is the mainstream media at work near the end of 2010. And this is on minnesota.cbslocal.com’s recently update site.

Closed circuit to frustrated minnesota.cbslocal.com employees: things may seem pretty dark at times like this, but it will get better. I hope.

Here is an example of the difference between the comment policies on The Deets vs. minnesota.cbslocal.com’s site:

That is a comment from someone using KKK within their username threatening to kill a black man who’s a person of interest in two recent local robberies. Get it? Someone who is black is kind of, maybe, suspected of something so KKKevin is volunteering to kill him via electric chair in the comments of a story on minnesota.cbslocal.com.

I grabbed the screenshot of the comment four hours after it was posted. Another hour later, it’s still up.

While this may be considered an acceptible comment on minnesota.cbslocal.com’s site, it would not fly on The Deets. In fact, it never would have gone live in the first place. Why? Because first time commenter’s comments are automatically held in moderation. This helps prevent spam from showing up on this site, and prevents the kind of rubbish you see every every day on minnesota.cbslocal.com, TwinCities.com and the StarTribune.com’s comments. If someone commented here using the name KKKevin with a post like that, it wouldn’t see the light of day.

It would be nice to see mainstream media sites raise to the bar set by bloggers. MinnPost.com manages to do it. Their standards for comments are very high (you must post under real first and last name), so KKKevin either posts, civilly, under his real name, or only comments where his hate speech is lackadaisical reactionarily policed, if at all.

For another example, check out the comments minnesota.cbslocal.com has allowed on a story about a woman that threatened to kill herself.

Horrible commenting policies attract horrible comments. Minnesota.cbslocal.com probably makes some proactive filtering efforts such as looking for common profane terms and the IP addresses of hardcore spammers. Regardless, minnesota.cbslocal.com has hosted this comment for 5 hours and counting.

Minneapolis.cbslocal.com does offer a “report comment” feature, which I did click, yet received no assurance that it actually does anything. One thing that would be cool is to see sites create credibility systems where news consumers would be trusted to clean up comments like this. My guess is that my clicking of the alert triggered an alert to some intern who’s going to make eventually make a judgment call. Or, perhaps the comment will be auto-removed if enough people click the link?

Better yet, minnesota.cbslocal.com could be proactive in their comment moderation in an effort to create a respectful community on their site. I imagine some people at minnesota.cbslocal.com would agree with that concept, while others think that the money derived from increase page views from racists justifies hosting hate speech.

It does make me wonder whether Ace Hardware, UPS, and Lennar realize that their ads are being shown alongside such rubbish.

Update 12:22am: Within 10 minutes of publishing this post, KKKevin’s comment was removed.

Here is a sample of the comments on a story Bill Hudson did for Channel 4 regarding a paid credit score analyzing service:

annmartina
This is news? Seems more like a free ad for this service

jwahlberg
Agreed with annamartina – this is what I call “rip-off journalism.”

dan
This is basically an ad for a credit repair service- A real story would explain the mechanics of the credit score- and explain the only “quick fix” is to lower the debt to credit ratio, and not be bait for the “service”. The other quick fix- the “authorized user” loophole has been closed. Clearly this is an ad.

B
As a loan officer I can tell you this is simply an ad. You should never have to pay anyone to improve your credit score. Simply make your payments on time, never advance up to your limit, and try to keep the debt you carry on those cards no more than 50% of your limit. Managing your finances is in no way rocket science, it’s basic common sense.

What if Bill Hudson had asked the mortgage broker what are the three most common things people could do to improve their credit score? You know, provide some value to viewers rather than turning the newscast into an infomercial. Is there a reason he didn’t? Would that have basically given away everything that the people selling this services are attempting to charge people to tell them?

I hope WCCO was paid well for this ad.