And judging from this NiemanLab conversation with a lot of the sites that have chosen to shutter comments, most of the websites have no intention of looking back. After all, what’s the use of a local, loyal, on-site community when you can just offload all conversation (and that traffic) to Facebook and Twitter, right? Dan Colarusso, executive editor of Reuters, for example, doesn’t think comments are important because damnit people — Reuters isn’t looking to argue!
“We’re not the kind of news organization that’s about giving our ‘take’ on something. We’re not looking to start an argument; we’re looking to report the news. We felt that, since so much of the conversation around stories had gravitated toward social, that was the better place for that discourse to happen. We did keep comments on our opinion pieces, because we felt that that is where you are trying to start an argument in the best possible way.”
Except comments aren’t just about having arguments, they’re a legitimate and transparent avenue for readers to publicly correct your errors right below the original article, which is something many of these sites likely grew tired of. Sure, poorly managed comments can devolve into a cesspool of banality, but good commenters almost always offer insights the writer or website may have missed, could have been wrong on, or never even thought of. In short, we want you to comment — we just want you to comment privately so our errors aren’t quite so painfully highlighted. For the sake of conversation, of course.
Last week On The Media was the latest to quietly kill comments on the bottom of its newsletter, informing readers that comments just don’t provide the “kind of dialogue” they wanted:
“We value our listeners above all and are always keen to know what you’re thinking, to hear your questions and concerns, to get feedback on what you like and dislike. So why shut down the comment section? As we hear more from listeners through Facebook and Twitter and directly through our website, we’ve concluded that the comment section just isn’t the best way to have the kind of dialogue we want with our listeners.”
By “kind of dialogue” you mean transparent and public? Over at the last bastion of website interaction known as Twitter, Mike amusingly highlighted the disjointed logic of claiming to value dialogue while dramatically reducing the number of avenues for it, and the website’s response doesn’t really make sense:
@mmasnick @onthemedia Our commenters risk nothing by owning their words. There’s a rich mix of love and hate right here. And more readers.
— Brooke Gladstone (@OTMBrooke) September 17, 2015