The Opportunities and Challenges of Comments

I view the Web as a two-way commuications medium. Today's technology makes it easy for users to interact with a website and one another. Many sites are still one-way, flat, brochure sites that still "publish" to the audience. That fits for some sites, but much of the time seems like an outdated approach.

USAToday recently redesigned its website in order to create a more interactive site and build community. One of the new features is to allow comments on stories from readers. From the site:

Join the conversation
We’re strong believers that our stories are the beginnings of a conversation, not the last word. That’s why we’re excited to add comments to every story page. Now when you read an article on USATODAY.com, you can see what others are thinking and join the conversation yourself. We feature the most interesting comments at the top of our main pages.

Generally speaking, I think this was a great idea. As more and more sites become interactive, it's nearly an expectation from the users that they're going to be able to communicate "back" in some way. I agree with their viewpoint that the stories are the beginnings of a conversation. I wish more sites used this approach, not only with "stories," but with a lot of the information
they publish.

On the other hand, I noticed some of the negative aspects to this setup as I browsed comments yesterday. Not unexpectedly, many simply took the opportunity to bash the redesign. People don't generally like change.

Today, BusinessWeek elaborates on more of the challenges of opening up the dialogue in this way. Among them:

• it's debatable whether all the comments that stay up do much to illuminate a
  subject
• just as enlightened online discussions may encourage readers to become more
  engaged with a publication, offensive comments risk turning them away

I don't think there's an easy answer to these challenges. I think that you have to have confidence in your audience that, over the long haul, it's going to regulate itself. Now, that doesn't mean you won't still need profanity filters or a way of reporting abusive commenters. But after people have had a chance to vent during these early stages, those that stick around will generally behave.