Mail Online’s introduction of a rating system for comments left on articles in December gives the paper an insight into the audience’s depth of feeling for an issue, Belam writes.
Video of the Citizen Media Project’s David Ardia explaining why – under US law – editors are not legally liable for changing comments left on their news sites.
As Pat Thornton points out:
“This falsehood must stop now. It’s been used — knowingly and unknowingly — by news organizations for years as justification not to allow user comments.”
Ever find you comment on a blog and forget to go back and check how the conversation is progressing? The Evolving Newsroom has two suggestions to help keep track of blog debates.
Video platform Seesmic is partnering with Six Apart, developer of blogging platform Movable Type to provide its users and their readers with the ability to integrate video comments alongside traditional text-based comments through a new plug-in.
Movable Type customers and their readers will also become part of Seesmic’s lively community.
The introduction of the Movable Type plug-in follows Seesmic’s integration with other blogging services.
A US judge is set to rule on whether to make New York state newspaper Journal News hand over the identity of users who left comments that may have libelled an ex-congressman.
According to lawyers working on the case, Westchester County Judge Rory Bellantoni will issue an order to LoHud.com for release of information to identify “SAVE10543,” “hadenough,” and “aoxomoxoa” for comments they made about former Rep. Richard Ottinger and his wife, June Ottinger.
The couple claimed they have been defamed by comments on the site that falsely accuse them of filing a fraudulent documents and bribing officials over the construction of their home.
They subpoenaed the newspaper to release the information, arguing they can’t bring a defamation suit against the three without their identities.
The Guardian is asking users to contribute topics for discussion on Comment is Free (CiF) through the site’s blog.
Submissions can also be made via CiF’s Twitter account.
The section recently implemented technology from social media firm Pluck to increase interaction and user engagement features on CiF.
The Guardian has redesigned its Comment Is Free (CiF) section as part of a new online community platform for the paper.
It has been integrated with the paper’s main site eradicating the divide between online and print comment, Georgina Henry, head of comment, has written in a blog post.
Changes to the design include:
The implementation of Pluck’s social media technology has added:
The redesign is part of the paper’s ongoing overhaul of its website.
We give developers the opportunity to tell us journalists why we should sit up and pay attention to the sites and devices they are working on. This week’s starter for ten is the aptly named YackTrack, designed to find info related to a single issue across various sites.
1) who are you and what’s it all about?
YackTrack is a service written by Rob Diana that allows a user to enter the URL of an article or blog post they want to find conversations about.
The conversations can be occurring on blogs (WordPress only so far), Digg, Mixx, Technorati (in the form of “blog reactions”), Disqus, StumbleUpon (in the form of “reviews”) and FriendFeed.
2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?
Based on the feedback I am receiving it seems to be useful to almost anyone. For a journalist, you can pick up a story from another site and run it through YackTrack, then get the all comments [made about the story] from other sites.
Most important in that list are the links you can get from services like Technorati. Those links are really just other articles or
blog posts talking about the same topic. If the topic if popular enough, you can grab several URLs from a service like TechMeme and run all of them through YackTrack and you could get a really good list of researchable articles.
3) Is this it, or is there more to come?
Yes there is more to come. Some things I cannot really talk about yet (as there has to be some suspense) and others are fairly straightforward.
Registration and saving of URLs to track are a logical step forward. RSS and email notifications are also a popular request. More service support is necessary as well. I have also had requests for blog plugins, specifically WordPress.
4) Why are you doing this?
A few weeks ago, there were a number of blog posts on where comments were being posted and whether the fragmented conversation was a good thing.
I think the fragmentation leads to more thought provoking conversations, but many bloggers do not know that their post was submitted to Mixx, Digg or StumbleUpon. Given that different sites have different cultures I thought it would be really interesting to have all of the conversations visible in one spot. I am getting the feeling that other people feel the same way.
5) What does it cost to use it?
Right now it does not cost anything to use. The service is simple to use and I would like to keep it available in that way.
6) How will you make it pay?
I would like the service to pay for its own hosting, but I do not really want to charge the users. I do have Google AdSense on the site now, but that is more to see if there is any minimal revenue available.
I am going to be looking at direct advertising as a revenue stream as well, as that could cover the hosting fees as well.
The Bolton News is directing readers to the site’s forum area after closing commenting features on its news stories.
The site suspended the comments last month because of abusive posters, according to How-Do, but is now urging readers to contribute to the site’s forums.
A welcome post from David Crookes, part of the internet operations team at the paper, said the move would ‘bring reader reaction together in one place’.
“The changes have been made because of a minority of people who have insisted on spoiling our previous comment facilities,” wrote Crookes.
“That will leave the majority free to discuss topics, safe in the knowledge that their opinions will be respected.”
Anyone posting offensive or abusive messages will be immediately banned from the site, with persistent offenders reported to Internet Service Providers, Crookes added.
Speaking on a panel at the Digital Hollywood conference, Jim Brady, executive editor of The Washington Post’s online division, said he would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards, and if need be, automatically kick them off for good.
He added that there was no guaranteed anonymity for those who post comments to Washingtonpost.com.