Home > So, what do you think? > Archives > 2009 > October > 09 > Entry
Play nicely or not at all
I’ll forego the language of some of our online guests and ask simply, what the heck is going on?
I apologize to anyone sensitive to the reckless use of “heck,” but I doubt we’ll receive an apology of any sort from the people who insinuate as many dirty words as they can in the online story commenting feature of our Web site.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, consider yourself fortunate. For some time now, editors here at the Rocky Mount Telegram have monitored, removed and - as of two weeks ago - pulled the plug on a feature that allows visitors to www.rockymounttelegram.com to comment on stories on our site.
In a perfect world, this feature would be a wonderful tool for fostering positive, constructive dialogue about issues that face our community. Readers could praise people who perform good works and exchange ideas on how to make Rocky Mount a better place to live.
So much for the perfect world. In our world, the online story commenting feature has become a train wreck.
Some of our visitors offer great ideas, support and information that’s genuinely helpful. But too often, those folks are drowned out by the noise of idiots. When they’re not spreading ridiculous rumors about people who live in the Twin Counties, they’re trying to figure out ways to insert dirty words into their comments. This requires the creative thinking power of a fifth-grader, since our Web site software filters out words that already have been deemed to be offensive.
Unfortunately, the software has limitations. It does not require real e-mail addresses, for example, granting posters virtual anonymity. We will be converting to a new platform in the next year that will change that, but for now, we have to play the cards we’ve been dealt.
For more than a few years, we have soldiered on anyway. Almost all of our editors, at various times, have removed comments from the site. At first we tried to limit the take-downs to cases in which readers called to complain. But for much of the past year, we’ve actively monitored the comment section, removing the garbage almost as soon as it has been posted.
That requires us to commit a significant amount of manpower to something that has absolutely nothing to do with producing a newspaper. And even though we are here for significant chunks of time, seven days a week, we can’t monitor round-the-clock. Nor should we have to.
The site melted down completely two weeks ago when some genius began posting variations of the “N” word on every single story. Let me be clear about that. This person wasn’t just posting comments to one or two stories that he or she found to be “N”-word worthy. This person was posting such comments to every single report - sports, weather, features, Associated Press analyses from Afghanistan … you name it.
We think the move might have been timed to somehow relate to last week’s City Council elections. (And that’s a real head-scratcher in itself). But on the night of Sept. 26, Copy Desk Chief Ray Watters pretty much said to heck with it. He pulled the plug on commenting for every story he was posting to the Web for the next day’s edition. Not to be outdone, that’s when the moron team began posting their brilliance on every other story on the site. On the following Monday, we disabled the commenting feature altogether, and it remained turned off through this weekend.
We’re cautiously flipping the switch back on today. I’d like to think that the parties responsible for the outbursts mentioned above may have learned that they have to behave themselves from now on. That means no profanity or hint of profanity, no potentially libelous remarks, no personal attacks and … well, the policy has been posted on the Web site ever since we began allowing comments. It’s very easy to read what’s allowable there.
The commenting feature, despite all its faults, has been popular with visitors to our site. As I noted at the beginning of this column, there are some people who use it responsibly in ways that actually enhance our content. For those folks, I’m genuinely appreciative.
To the others, this is a final warning. If the stupidity gets out of hand again, we’ll take down the feature for good. It’s pretty bad when a Web site improves for what it doesn’t contain rather than for what it does. If that happens, I’d like to borrow a great line from a friend of Watters: We apologize to our readers for our readers. It’s your call, folks. Play nicely or don’t play at all.
Jeff Herrin is the editor of the Rocky Mount Telegram.
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