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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On August 18 2016 03:31 CobaltBlu wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 03:28 LegalLord wrote:On August 18 2016 03:27 mahrgell wrote:On August 18 2016 03:25 oBlade wrote:
Nobody's forced to read comments on a news outlet. But they're wonderful checks to have because so much of what all journalists print is garbage. Yeah, we should be happy, those comments exist to add their quality content to those rubbish the journalists are publishing. He's often right though. I've seen a lot of times when the comments rightfully called BS on shitty articles. They also call BS on quality articles because it doesn't say what they want
It's a mixed bag. But it does add to the article to be able to read a few of those perspectives.
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On August 18 2016 02:43 Plansix wrote:http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-website-to-get-rid-of-commentsShow nested quote +NPR is making an announcement today that is sure to upset a loyal core of its audience, those who comment online at NPR.org (including those who comment on this blog). As of Aug. 23, online comments, a feature of the site since 2008, will be disabled.
With the change, NPR joins a long list of other news organizations choosing to move conversations about its journalism off its own site and instead rely on social media to pick up the slack. But NPR stands for National Public Radio, so a decision to limit "public" input at NPR.org seems especially jarring.
The decision should not be taken to mean that NPR does not value audience engagement, said Scott Montgomery, managing editor for digital news. "We've been working on audience engagement, user connections, in a variety of ways, for many, many years, certainly going back to even before the internet. It is a part of public media. It's important to us," he told me.
But at this point, he argued, the audience itself has decided for NPR, choosing to engage much more via social media, primarily on Twitter and Facebook, rather than in the NPR.org comments section.
"We've reached the point where we've realized that there are other, better ways to achieve the same kind of community discussion around the issues we raise in our journalism," he said, with money, and spending it efficiently, part of the issue. More than 5 million people each month engage with NPR on Twitter, compared to just a fraction of that number in the NPR.org comments. "In relative terms, as we set priorities, it becomes increasingly clear that the market has spoken. This is where people want to engage with us. So that's what we're going to emphasize," he said.
I did find the numbers quite startling. In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters, Montgomery said. That's 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.
Social media symbols forming noise around woman plugging earsi
Dan Sipple/Getty Images/Ikon Images
When NPR analyzed the number of people who left at least one comment in both June and July, the numbers showed an even more interesting pattern: Just 4,300 users posted about 145 comments apiece, or 67 percent of all NPR.org comments for the two months. More than half of all comments in May, June and July combined came from a mere 2,600 users. The conclusion: NPR's commenting system — which gets more expensive the more comments that are posted, and in some months has cost NPR twice what was budgeted — is serving a very, very small slice of its overall audience.
It's not possible to tell who those commenters are; some users comment anonymously. But there are some clues that indicate those who comment are not wholly representative of the overall NPR audience: They overwhelmingly comment via the desktop (younger users tend to find NPR.org via mobile), and a Google estimate suggested that the commenters were 83 percent male, while overall NPR.org users were just 52 percent male, Montgomery said.
When viewed purely from the perspective of whether the comments were fostering constructive conversations, the change should come as no surprise. The number of complaints to NPR about the current comment system has been growing—complaints that comments were censored by the outside moderators, and that commenters were behaving inappropriately and harassing other commenters. From yesterday on the topic of removing comments, NPR is shutting down their comments section because it servers a very small section of their user base. Also, I’m sure the comments sucked. I think comment sections are going to be a thing we look back on and laugh about in 10 years.
I think we brought this up a couple days ago, but this is a large part of the reason news sites/organizations are falling apart now. Comment sections might suck, but denying any community from forming on your site hurts you more than anyone else.
Being factual doesn't help when there is no reader engagement, compared to platforms where news can be completely false but someone can spend hours debating it.
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On August 18 2016 03:34 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 02:43 Plansix wrote:http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-website-to-get-rid-of-commentsNPR is making an announcement today that is sure to upset a loyal core of its audience, those who comment online at NPR.org (including those who comment on this blog). As of Aug. 23, online comments, a feature of the site since 2008, will be disabled.
With the change, NPR joins a long list of other news organizations choosing to move conversations about its journalism off its own site and instead rely on social media to pick up the slack. But NPR stands for National Public Radio, so a decision to limit "public" input at NPR.org seems especially jarring.
The decision should not be taken to mean that NPR does not value audience engagement, said Scott Montgomery, managing editor for digital news. "We've been working on audience engagement, user connections, in a variety of ways, for many, many years, certainly going back to even before the internet. It is a part of public media. It's important to us," he told me.
But at this point, he argued, the audience itself has decided for NPR, choosing to engage much more via social media, primarily on Twitter and Facebook, rather than in the NPR.org comments section.
"We've reached the point where we've realized that there are other, better ways to achieve the same kind of community discussion around the issues we raise in our journalism," he said, with money, and spending it efficiently, part of the issue. More than 5 million people each month engage with NPR on Twitter, compared to just a fraction of that number in the NPR.org comments. "In relative terms, as we set priorities, it becomes increasingly clear that the market has spoken. This is where people want to engage with us. So that's what we're going to emphasize," he said.
I did find the numbers quite startling. In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters, Montgomery said. That's 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.
Social media symbols forming noise around woman plugging earsi
Dan Sipple/Getty Images/Ikon Images
When NPR analyzed the number of people who left at least one comment in both June and July, the numbers showed an even more interesting pattern: Just 4,300 users posted about 145 comments apiece, or 67 percent of all NPR.org comments for the two months. More than half of all comments in May, June and July combined came from a mere 2,600 users. The conclusion: NPR's commenting system — which gets more expensive the more comments that are posted, and in some months has cost NPR twice what was budgeted — is serving a very, very small slice of its overall audience.
It's not possible to tell who those commenters are; some users comment anonymously. But there are some clues that indicate those who comment are not wholly representative of the overall NPR audience: They overwhelmingly comment via the desktop (younger users tend to find NPR.org via mobile), and a Google estimate suggested that the commenters were 83 percent male, while overall NPR.org users were just 52 percent male, Montgomery said.
When viewed purely from the perspective of whether the comments were fostering constructive conversations, the change should come as no surprise. The number of complaints to NPR about the current comment system has been growing—complaints that comments were censored by the outside moderators, and that commenters were behaving inappropriately and harassing other commenters. From yesterday on the topic of removing comments, NPR is shutting down their comments section because it servers a very small section of their user base. Also, I’m sure the comments sucked. I think comment sections are going to be a thing we look back on and laugh about in 10 years. I think we brought this up a couple days ago, but this is a large part of the reason news sites/organizations are falling apart now. Comment sections might suck, but denying any community from forming on your site hurts you more than anyone else. Being factual doesn't help when there is no reader engagement, compared to platforms where news can be completely false but someone can spend hours debating it.
Sites are having a rough time because of ad block on the internet and free context being constantly devalued, but that is a different discussion. The article points out that is a very small part of their viewer base. 0.06% of the user base. The comment sections are worthless to NPR by any metric.
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On August 18 2016 03:25 oBlade wrote:
Nobody's forced to read comments on a news outlet. But they're wonderful checks to have because so much of what all journalists print is garbage.
The problem is that when they're generally regarded as shit, they stop being good checks because journalists stop caring about what people write in the comments, even when there's legitimate criticism.
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On August 18 2016 03:27 mahrgell wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 03:25 oBlade wrote:
Nobody's forced to read comments on a news outlet. But they're wonderful checks to have because so much of what all journalists print is garbage. Yeah, we should be happy, those comments exist to add their quality content to those rubbish the journalists are publishing.
My mistake, everyone should get rid of comments so nobody impugns the sacred authority of the fourth estate.
These papers have been obsolescing as people realize they can go to other outlets that actually engage with readers, and they can get biased content from alternative sources without the pretense of neutrality.
The reason some people have shit comments is 1) they don't have a system that was built with any semblance of competence, like Disqus 2) they aren't responding by increasing the quality 3) their business model is clickbait and trolling bloggers.
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On August 18 2016 03:47 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 03:27 mahrgell wrote:On August 18 2016 03:25 oBlade wrote:
Nobody's forced to read comments on a news outlet. But they're wonderful checks to have because so much of what all journalists print is garbage. Yeah, we should be happy, those comments exist to add their quality content to those rubbish the journalists are publishing. My mistake, everyone should get rid of comments so nobody impugns the sacred authority of the fourth estate. These papers have been obsolescing as people realize they can go to other outlets that actually engage with readers, and they can get biased content from alternative sources without the pretense of neutrality. The reason some people have shit comments is 1) they don't have a system that was built with any semblance of competence, like Disqus 2) they aren't responding by increasing the quality 3) their business model is clickbait and trolling bloggers.
Write an email or letter to the editor. Not all criticism needs to be public performance on the piece you disagree with. Or don’t read the article or publication in the future.
These companies are not charities. They don’t John Q Public a platform to critique an article he disagreed with. It isn’t like the internet is lacking in places to post articles and discuss how bad they are.
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Is maintaining a comment section really that expensive?
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Adblocks prevalence is due to immense short sightedness from advertisers in the past, to the point where it is fairly dangerous to use them on any site using an ad network as they frequently have malware embedded in them, not to mention the prevalence of full page pop-ups and intrusive flash ads. It sucks for the companies that rely on internet ads, but it seems unlikely to change anytime soon and what we are left with is the equivalent of fox news hosts shilling for gold companies.
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It is likely more expensive than not having one at all. Moderating the comment section is likely where the cost comes into play. But Valve said they can spend well over a million in a day just in email, so I bet it costs more than we think.
On August 18 2016 03:57 Nevuk wrote:
Adblocks prevalence is due to immense short sightedness from advertisers in the past, to the point where it is fairly dangerous to use them on any site using an ad network as they frequently have malware embedded in them, not to mention the prevalence of full page pop-ups and intrusive flash ads. It sucks for the companies that rely on internet ads, but it seems unlikely to change anytime soon and what we are left with is the equivalent of fox news hosts shilling for gold companies.
Agreed. I think adblock is important and the quality of ads on the internet had gone down. But that also means that free content will always be a dying breed. Most of my favorite sites and communities charge for their best content and I pay.
Its why I find it comical when people complain about click bait, when so few people are getting super rich on the internet.
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I mean that npr article is kind of vague... Twice more than their budget could mean 2 cents instead of 1.
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On August 18 2016 03:40 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 03:34 WolfintheSheep wrote:On August 18 2016 02:43 Plansix wrote:http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-website-to-get-rid-of-commentsNPR is making an announcement today that is sure to upset a loyal core of its audience, those who comment online at NPR.org (including those who comment on this blog). As of Aug. 23, online comments, a feature of the site since 2008, will be disabled.
With the change, NPR joins a long list of other news organizations choosing to move conversations about its journalism off its own site and instead rely on social media to pick up the slack. But NPR stands for National Public Radio, so a decision to limit "public" input at NPR.org seems especially jarring.
The decision should not be taken to mean that NPR does not value audience engagement, said Scott Montgomery, managing editor for digital news. "We've been working on audience engagement, user connections, in a variety of ways, for many, many years, certainly going back to even before the internet. It is a part of public media. It's important to us," he told me.
But at this point, he argued, the audience itself has decided for NPR, choosing to engage much more via social media, primarily on Twitter and Facebook, rather than in the NPR.org comments section.
"We've reached the point where we've realized that there are other, better ways to achieve the same kind of community discussion around the issues we raise in our journalism," he said, with money, and spending it efficiently, part of the issue. More than 5 million people each month engage with NPR on Twitter, compared to just a fraction of that number in the NPR.org comments. "In relative terms, as we set priorities, it becomes increasingly clear that the market has spoken. This is where people want to engage with us. So that's what we're going to emphasize," he said.
I did find the numbers quite startling. In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters, Montgomery said. That's 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.
Social media symbols forming noise around woman plugging earsi
Dan Sipple/Getty Images/Ikon Images
When NPR analyzed the number of people who left at least one comment in both June and July, the numbers showed an even more interesting pattern: Just 4,300 users posted about 145 comments apiece, or 67 percent of all NPR.org comments for the two months. More than half of all comments in May, June and July combined came from a mere 2,600 users. The conclusion: NPR's commenting system — which gets more expensive the more comments that are posted, and in some months has cost NPR twice what was budgeted — is serving a very, very small slice of its overall audience.
It's not possible to tell who those commenters are; some users comment anonymously. But there are some clues that indicate those who comment are not wholly representative of the overall NPR audience: They overwhelmingly comment via the desktop (younger users tend to find NPR.org via mobile), and a Google estimate suggested that the commenters were 83 percent male, while overall NPR.org users were just 52 percent male, Montgomery said.
When viewed purely from the perspective of whether the comments were fostering constructive conversations, the change should come as no surprise. The number of complaints to NPR about the current comment system has been growing—complaints that comments were censored by the outside moderators, and that commenters were behaving inappropriately and harassing other commenters. From yesterday on the topic of removing comments, NPR is shutting down their comments section because it servers a very small section of their user base. Also, I’m sure the comments sucked. I think comment sections are going to be a thing we look back on and laugh about in 10 years. I think we brought this up a couple days ago, but this is a large part of the reason news sites/organizations are falling apart now. Comment sections might suck, but denying any community from forming on your site hurts you more than anyone else. Being factual doesn't help when there is no reader engagement, compared to platforms where news can be completely false but someone can spend hours debating it. Sites are having a rough time because of ad block on the internet and free context being constantly devalued, but that is a different discussion. The article points out that is a very small part of their viewer base. 0.06% of the user base. The comment sections are worthless to NPR by any metric.
Which, again, shows a severe failure to cultivate any kind of community. People like community, and tend to stick around when there is one.
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From a purely business standpoint it makes sense to cut it if an insignificant minority of their base uses it and the costs so significantly outweigh the benefits it provides
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I really did not want to use Adblock because I do understand the importance of ads to profit for websites I like to visit. Terrible ads, especially on streaming services that cut off an important part of the stream to show an ad, have changed my opinion on the matter.
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On August 18 2016 04:01 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
From a purely business standpoint it makes sense to cut it if an insignificant minority of their base uses it and the costs so significantly outweigh the benefits it provides
From a purely business standpoint newspapers are a dying breed and banner ad revenue is a failing revenue source.
Doubling down on both is probably the opposite of making sense.
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On August 18 2016 04:03 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 04:01 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
From a purely business standpoint it makes sense to cut it if an insignificant minority of their base uses it and the costs so significantly outweigh the benefits it provides From a purely business standpoint newspapers are a dying breed and banner ad revenue is a failing revenue source. Doubling down on both is probably the opposite of making sense.
I don't understand what this has to do with getting rid of a comment section no one uses to reduce unnecessary expenses
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On August 18 2016 03:52 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 03:47 oBlade wrote:On August 18 2016 03:27 mahrgell wrote:On August 18 2016 03:25 oBlade wrote:
Nobody's forced to read comments on a news outlet. But they're wonderful checks to have because so much of what all journalists print is garbage. Yeah, we should be happy, those comments exist to add their quality content to those rubbish the journalists are publishing. My mistake, everyone should get rid of comments so nobody impugns the sacred authority of the fourth estate. These papers have been obsolescing as people realize they can go to other outlets that actually engage with readers, and they can get biased content from alternative sources without the pretense of neutrality. The reason some people have shit comments is 1) they don't have a system that was built with any semblance of competence, like Disqus 2) they aren't responding by increasing the quality 3) their business model is clickbait and trolling bloggers. Write an email or letter to the editor. Not all criticism needs to be public performance on the piece you disagree with. Or don’t read the article or publication in the future. These companies are not charities. They don’t John Q Public a platform to critique an article he disagreed with. It isn’t like the internet is lacking in places to post articles and discuss how bad they are.
The source is the best place to cut garbage off at the pass. Not to go and look for the article on a content aggregator or have to post it yourself or introduce it somewhere like here where nobody gives a shit because the people on this page aren't the ones reading the article - the people on the news site are coincidentally the ones reading it.
Why would I stop reading a paper just because they made a mistake? The goal is to get them to print better. Not disconnect something that you can't handle like a Scientologist. They're not charities, so I should write a 5 page pristine letter to the editor that they might print and respond to without reimbursing me. Or we can just show it to the readers and see what their input was.
On August 18 2016 03:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
Is maintaining a comment section really that expensive?
No, which is why Youtube, which hosts streaming videos for free, hasn't disabled comments on all pages.
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On August 18 2016 04:01 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 03:40 Plansix wrote:On August 18 2016 03:34 WolfintheSheep wrote:On August 18 2016 02:43 Plansix wrote:http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-website-to-get-rid-of-commentsNPR is making an announcement today that is sure to upset a loyal core of its audience, those who comment online at NPR.org (including those who comment on this blog). As of Aug. 23, online comments, a feature of the site since 2008, will be disabled.
With the change, NPR joins a long list of other news organizations choosing to move conversations about its journalism off its own site and instead rely on social media to pick up the slack. But NPR stands for National Public Radio, so a decision to limit "public" input at NPR.org seems especially jarring.
The decision should not be taken to mean that NPR does not value audience engagement, said Scott Montgomery, managing editor for digital news. "We've been working on audience engagement, user connections, in a variety of ways, for many, many years, certainly going back to even before the internet. It is a part of public media. It's important to us," he told me.
But at this point, he argued, the audience itself has decided for NPR, choosing to engage much more via social media, primarily on Twitter and Facebook, rather than in the NPR.org comments section.
"We've reached the point where we've realized that there are other, better ways to achieve the same kind of community discussion around the issues we raise in our journalism," he said, with money, and spending it efficiently, part of the issue. More than 5 million people each month engage with NPR on Twitter, compared to just a fraction of that number in the NPR.org comments. "In relative terms, as we set priorities, it becomes increasingly clear that the market has spoken. This is where people want to engage with us. So that's what we're going to emphasize," he said.
I did find the numbers quite startling. In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters, Montgomery said. That's 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.
Social media symbols forming noise around woman plugging earsi
Dan Sipple/Getty Images/Ikon Images
When NPR analyzed the number of people who left at least one comment in both June and July, the numbers showed an even more interesting pattern: Just 4,300 users posted about 145 comments apiece, or 67 percent of all NPR.org comments for the two months. More than half of all comments in May, June and July combined came from a mere 2,600 users. The conclusion: NPR's commenting system — which gets more expensive the more comments that are posted, and in some months has cost NPR twice what was budgeted — is serving a very, very small slice of its overall audience.
It's not possible to tell who those commenters are; some users comment anonymously. But there are some clues that indicate those who comment are not wholly representative of the overall NPR audience: They overwhelmingly comment via the desktop (younger users tend to find NPR.org via mobile), and a Google estimate suggested that the commenters were 83 percent male, while overall NPR.org users were just 52 percent male, Montgomery said.
When viewed purely from the perspective of whether the comments were fostering constructive conversations, the change should come as no surprise. The number of complaints to NPR about the current comment system has been growing—complaints that comments were censored by the outside moderators, and that commenters were behaving inappropriately and harassing other commenters. From yesterday on the topic of removing comments, NPR is shutting down their comments section because it servers a very small section of their user base. Also, I’m sure the comments sucked. I think comment sections are going to be a thing we look back on and laugh about in 10 years. I think we brought this up a couple days ago, but this is a large part of the reason news sites/organizations are falling apart now. Comment sections might suck, but denying any community from forming on your site hurts you more than anyone else. Being factual doesn't help when there is no reader engagement, compared to platforms where news can be completely false but someone can spend hours debating it. Sites are having a rough time because of ad block on the internet and free context being constantly devalued, but that is a different discussion. The article points out that is a very small part of their viewer base. 0.06% of the user base. The comment sections are worthless to NPR by any metric. Which, again, shows a severe failure to cultivate any kind of community. People like community, and tend to stick around when there is one.
You know NPR is National Public Radio, right? They already have an active community. They are funded by community donations only. They are a non-profit funded by public donations.
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On August 18 2016 04:06 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 03:52 Plansix wrote:On August 18 2016 03:47 oBlade wrote:On August 18 2016 03:27 mahrgell wrote:On August 18 2016 03:25 oBlade wrote:
Nobody's forced to read comments on a news outlet. But they're wonderful checks to have because so much of what all journalists print is garbage. Yeah, we should be happy, those comments exist to add their quality content to those rubbish the journalists are publishing. My mistake, everyone should get rid of comments so nobody impugns the sacred authority of the fourth estate. These papers have been obsolescing as people realize they can go to other outlets that actually engage with readers, and they can get biased content from alternative sources without the pretense of neutrality. The reason some people have shit comments is 1) they don't have a system that was built with any semblance of competence, like Disqus 2) they aren't responding by increasing the quality 3) their business model is clickbait and trolling bloggers. Write an email or letter to the editor. Not all criticism needs to be public performance on the piece you disagree with. Or don’t read the article or publication in the future. These companies are not charities. They don’t John Q Public a platform to critique an article he disagreed with. It isn’t like the internet is lacking in places to post articles and discuss how bad they are. The source is the best place to cut garbage off at the pass. Not to go and look for the article on a content aggregator or have to post it yourself or introduce it somewhere like here where nobody gives a shit because the people on this page aren't the ones reading the article - the people on the news site are coincidentally the ones reading it. Why would I stop reading a paper just because they made a mistake? The goal is to get them to print better. Not disconnect something that you can't handle like a Scientologist. They're not charities, so I should write a 5 page pristine letter to the editor that they might print and respond to without reimbursing me. Or we can just show it to the readers and see what their input was. Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 03:53 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
Is maintaining a comment section really that expensive? No, which is why Youtube, which hosts streaming videos for free, hasn't disabled comments on all pages.
Heaven forbid you have to pay a little money, time and effort to make someone aware of your opinion.
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On August 18 2016 04:07 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 04:01 WolfintheSheep wrote:On August 18 2016 03:40 Plansix wrote:On August 18 2016 03:34 WolfintheSheep wrote:On August 18 2016 02:43 Plansix wrote:http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-website-to-get-rid-of-commentsNPR is making an announcement today that is sure to upset a loyal core of its audience, those who comment online at NPR.org (including those who comment on this blog). As of Aug. 23, online comments, a feature of the site since 2008, will be disabled.
With the change, NPR joins a long list of other news organizations choosing to move conversations about its journalism off its own site and instead rely on social media to pick up the slack. But NPR stands for National Public Radio, so a decision to limit "public" input at NPR.org seems especially jarring.
The decision should not be taken to mean that NPR does not value audience engagement, said Scott Montgomery, managing editor for digital news. "We've been working on audience engagement, user connections, in a variety of ways, for many, many years, certainly going back to even before the internet. It is a part of public media. It's important to us," he told me.
But at this point, he argued, the audience itself has decided for NPR, choosing to engage much more via social media, primarily on Twitter and Facebook, rather than in the NPR.org comments section.
"We've reached the point where we've realized that there are other, better ways to achieve the same kind of community discussion around the issues we raise in our journalism," he said, with money, and spending it efficiently, part of the issue. More than 5 million people each month engage with NPR on Twitter, compared to just a fraction of that number in the NPR.org comments. "In relative terms, as we set priorities, it becomes increasingly clear that the market has spoken. This is where people want to engage with us. So that's what we're going to emphasize," he said.
I did find the numbers quite startling. In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters, Montgomery said. That's 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.
Social media symbols forming noise around woman plugging earsi
Dan Sipple/Getty Images/Ikon Images
When NPR analyzed the number of people who left at least one comment in both June and July, the numbers showed an even more interesting pattern: Just 4,300 users posted about 145 comments apiece, or 67 percent of all NPR.org comments for the two months. More than half of all comments in May, June and July combined came from a mere 2,600 users. The conclusion: NPR's commenting system — which gets more expensive the more comments that are posted, and in some months has cost NPR twice what was budgeted — is serving a very, very small slice of its overall audience.
It's not possible to tell who those commenters are; some users comment anonymously. But there are some clues that indicate those who comment are not wholly representative of the overall NPR audience: They overwhelmingly comment via the desktop (younger users tend to find NPR.org via mobile), and a Google estimate suggested that the commenters were 83 percent male, while overall NPR.org users were just 52 percent male, Montgomery said.
When viewed purely from the perspective of whether the comments were fostering constructive conversations, the change should come as no surprise. The number of complaints to NPR about the current comment system has been growing—complaints that comments were censored by the outside moderators, and that commenters were behaving inappropriately and harassing other commenters. From yesterday on the topic of removing comments, NPR is shutting down their comments section because it servers a very small section of their user base. Also, I’m sure the comments sucked. I think comment sections are going to be a thing we look back on and laugh about in 10 years. I think we brought this up a couple days ago, but this is a large part of the reason news sites/organizations are falling apart now. Comment sections might suck, but denying any community from forming on your site hurts you more than anyone else. Being factual doesn't help when there is no reader engagement, compared to platforms where news can be completely false but someone can spend hours debating it. Sites are having a rough time because of ad block on the internet and free context being constantly devalued, but that is a different discussion. The article points out that is a very small part of their viewer base. 0.06% of the user base. The comment sections are worthless to NPR by any metric. Which, again, shows a severe failure to cultivate any kind of community. People like community, and tend to stick around when there is one. You know NPR is National Public Radio, right? They already have an active community. They are funded by community donations only. They are a non-profit funded by public donations.
Okay, not familiar at all with NPR then. Well, if they don't care about revenue and readership, then disregard all.
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I'm looking at an article from today and there's over 2,000 comments so I would hardly say it isn't used
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