Seemingly without exception, every single article is followed by a string of very angry commentary from people who clearly have an axe to grind. According to them, everything is Daley's fault, and we must blame the city and its leaders for any-and-everything.

Instead of attracting constructive debate and civic discussion, the commentary section is being used by ticked off people to complain, complain, complain to no end. I'm not saying that accusing the city's leaders of wrongdoing doesn't have its place, but having read plenty of commentary sections I can say with confidence that we're seeing little else but that, and it makes one wonder if this is an experiment in internet journalism that should be continued.

Thoughts?

Not a single comment.

Great!

They're useful to take a quick peek into the minds of the deranged, which can be fun. Besides that, they are worthless.

Not a single comment.

Great!



Welcome to the dead Chicago subfourm.




http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=403463&page=22

I think all newspaper forums suffer from this. It's just another form of voluntary response bias.

Yeah, people armed not with facts, insights or even interpretations of those, but just with an opinion based on what they call 'common sense' or what I call 'general frustration' posting on news sites seems to be a universal problem. I skipped those toilet bowls years ago. The comments pages on the already quality poor Rotterdam Daily keep reinventing new rock bottoms when it comes to that.

Not a single comment.
What's there to comment on? You are complaining about people complaining...

Every comment section I've ever seen has mindless venting and non-substantiated ranting. There are many reasons why this is that aren't worth getting into for the purposes of the question. For the publishers of online content, I think they feel the need to make their material feel as interactive as possible, for better or for worse. Occasionally, beneficial insight will arise out of the infinite string of crap, so there is that to be said (not much, I'll admit). At any rate, I think that the comments area functions to increase readership in one way or another; indeed, so long as the space for them is not intrusive and doesn't interfere with the overall readability of the piece they can't hurt. My personal opinion is that I would like to see them disappear so long as they continue to be a crushing reminder of how idiotic most people are. Quite entertaining most of the time, though.

The NYTimes allows comments on certain articles, and they usually frame the debate by giving readers a specific question. Maybe The Tribune should try that. Maybe they need more readers to produce more intelligent debates.

I think all newspaper forums suffer from this. It's just another form of voluntary response bias.

perhaps, but I wonder why newspaper fora, in particular, are such incredibly toxic breeding grounds for know-nothingism. you'd assume newspaper readers are a half-step above, say, TV watchers. I've seen few newspaper fora which don't make my eyes sting after the third snippet of verbal excreta. hell, even vile right-wing forums aren't quite as hazardous.

sure, overboard snark is the unfortunate way of the interwebs (see the Gawker empire) but sheesh, after a few Tribune comment threads I seriously feared for my safety -- if there are that many genuinely dangerous sociopaths out there, just moments from snapping into murderous rampages, I don't want to share the streets and sidewalks with 'em.

I remember back when Yahoo allowed comments on news stories, the comments were generally incredibly awful and sometimes hilarious in a bad way. Every story was filled with it.

Blair Kamin moderates comments on his blog - it leads to mostly high quality discussion.

^ I think that should be a standard held throughout the Tribune and Crains

Blair Kamin moderates comments on his blog - it leads to mostly high quality discussion.


Thre are still a lot a assholes that post for the same reason that this post was created.

Thankfully BK can keep the stupid people at bay a bit but it is a never ending war of nimby's,GOP'ers, and anti Chicago peps that post in the comment sections of said articles that destroy the main point. [other than BNK's great work.]




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Kamin