After years of complaints, the Hearst Newspaper Corporation (Connecticut Post, Danbury News-Times, Greenwich Time, Stamford Advocate) finally pulled the plug on the comment service.We’ve heard you.
Time and again, the most consistent complaint about our sites we’ve heard from our users has been, to paraphrase, “The comments on your stories are horrible.”
“They’re filled with vile garbage.”
“They do nothing to add to a healthy conversation.”
“They’re extremely offensive.”
Our response has been equally steadfast: “We agree with you.”
Nobody cares more passionately about the freedom of speech than the members of our industry. I wouldn’t be doing what I do today if I didn’t believe strongly in the rights promised in the First Amendment.
In that sense, I’m not alone in thinking that users should be able to post comments on the stories that we write. I also think they should be able to post comments that I personally disagree with.
What I don’t believe, though, is that people should be allowed to anonymously post racist, threatening, homophobic comments on our site on a daily basis. And we’ve never allowed them to. Whenever that kind of garbage has been reported to us, we have deleted it as promptly as we could.
The problem with our story commenting system, which was administrated on a partnership with Topix.com, was that it made such anonymous postings all too easy to write.
I still believe it was an extremely vocal minority that ruined the concept for everyone else. But it’s a moot point: They were way out of hand.
Out of hand is an understatement...for a look back at some of that garbage from the past, click on any of the links below.
Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, Link 5, Link 6, Link 7, Link 8
As you know, I've LONG advocated that the News-Times part ways with Topix and establish a new comment system which requires registration (with a valid email address). Thankfully, the paper took the first step in the right direction.
...goodbye TOPIX, trust me, you won't be missed.
UPDATE: What was life like before Topix?
People have emailed me questioning how people commented on the News-Times before Topix.
Well, there were two ways...let me explain (I'm hoping I get this right).
The original way people communicated on the News-Times site was via the Online Forums. Here's a sample of what it looked like back in 2005 (via the Wayback Machine).
With the Online Forum, you had to register in order to post a comment (I think with a valid email address...it's been awhile). You can click here to view a sample of a comment thread from the old Online Forum from 2006 (or just look below).
Unlike the wild world of the Topix service, the Online Forums didn't generate much traffic. This was mainly because back then, the forums were a separate entity on this site and wasn't linked to articles. Think of the old forums as the old school
BBS (Bulletin Board System) that was popular in the 80s (yes, there was a form of computer communication BEFORE the internet).
I think in either 06 or 07, the News-Times first experimented with allowing readers to post comments along side articles. Click here for a sample of an article with the original comments section from April 2007 (or...just look below).
Unlike the online forums (which were still around at this point), the News-Times' original comment section allowed people to post messages anonymously. Add that with the xenophobia that was on the rise during that time and...well, lets say all hell broke loose and soon comments at the News-Times got out of control.
...and then came the conversion to Topix.
Believe it or now, when it came to posting comments, Topix was a step in the right direction. It gave readers a way to flag offensive comments which would be removed...the problem stemmed mainly from the amount of time an offensive comment would stay on Topix.
Also, another MAJOR problem with Topix was, unlike the original Online Forums, one could post a comment without registering an account. To this day, I don't understand why the owners of Topix resist incorporating a registration feature into their service. With Hearst Newspaper dropping Topix, I'm almost certain the new comment service will include some type of registration (which hopefully will decrease the amount of racist/homophobic nonsense that readers endured for the last two years).
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