A somber mood engulfed friends and family of David B. Kellermann several weeks ago as they struggled to understand the death of Freddie Mac’s acting chief financial officer. But a boisterous shouting match was taking place on The Post’s Web site among those commenting on the story about his apparent suicide.
“Feeling sorry for THIS guy? Give me a break,” wrote one, alluding to anger over immense losses at the housing finance giant. “Hopefully this is the first of many.”
Another speculated that Kellermann “might have been getting ready to give up the names of prominent individuals and was perhaps ‘taken out’ by Cheney’s death squad.”
Others countered, pleading for respect.
“Most of you are truly sick and despicable,” wrote one.
And there was this: “Can no one moderate some of these sick, twisted, comments?”
I believe that online, The Post should tolerate precisely the kind of moronic, anonymous, unsubstantiated and often venomous comments accompanying the Kellermann story. It’s the essence of free speech.
A friend says that online commenting is a mixture of karaoke and road rage. He’s right. Comments can be noxious, like the one from anonymous poster “krushX,” who said my last column was “a groaning pile of decay.” (I know where you live.)
But they also can be insightful and illuminating. And anonymity allows unfiltered candor that reflects what’s on readers’ minds.
The Post is correct to encourage anonymous commenting. It makes its Web site a vibrant town square. And it’s a way of increasing site traffic, a key to The Post’s survival as its audience shifts online.
But here’s the challenge: shaping these growing online conversations in a way that encourages civility without restricting speech.
At washingtonpost.com, comments are automatically posted without prior review. Readers must first register and agree to guidelines precluding comments that are racist, sexist, obscene or libelous. It’s a self-governing process in which the posters themselves may click on a “Report Abuse” button next to each comment. That alerts Web site editors who otherwise face the impossible task of monitoring as many as 10,000 comments each week. In a typical week, roughly 500 abusive comments are removed.
With only two staffers assigned to monitor comments, the Web site does a good job. But The Post needs to find better ways to raise the quality of discourse and to prevent a few “trolls” from hijacking a conversation with inane rants.
A running tally is kept of how many readers have clicked the “Recommend” button next to each comment. But some other Web sites take the extra step of moving “recommended” comments to the top, so the conversation focuses on what the audience thinks is most salient.
Many sites offer extensive “role modeling” or “curating” of comments. “Basically, it’s a way of saying: ‘For those of you who don’t have the time to go through 2,000 comments, here are four or five that are really good,’” explained Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida.
At True/Slant , an innovative Web site being developed to allow writers to maintain their own pages, the journalists “call out” comments for special attention. They’re grouped by “most active” posters and “most called-out comments” so readers can key on those deemed most interesting.
Some sites routinely highlight especially relevant comments — even displaying them in boxes — as a way of steering the online conversation toward that viewpoint.
Or, The Post might experiment with dividing online story comments into two channels — those civil and salient, and those unruly or off-topic. It would provide readers with a choice of dialogue without limiting comments.
“Those techniques do a lot to set the tone,” said McBride. “But you also have to have enforcement.” When abusive comments are stricken from the site, she said, it helps to tell the posters why the comments were removed and to encourage them to resubmit their comments in an acceptable form.
Washingtonpost.com does limited curating. But it needs technology upgrades to do more.
“The software we’re using doesn’t readily support comment filtering or sorting based on user or editor rankings,” said Hal Straus, who oversees commenting at The Post’s Web site. That should be remedied with a new “content management system,” which will be phased in beginning this fall.
In the meantime, Straus said readers can help elevate any online conversation by jumping in. Otherwise, it can be seized by loudmouths or bullies.
“Active discussions are almost always good quality,” he said, because “there are always users . . . willing to correct problem commenters.”
