Patrick Beeson

The following comments were posted to a story titled "Concealed guns" on ljworld.com:

andrew55 (Anonymous) says‚ I recently obtained a permit to carry. The process was not that complicated in this State. The fees are comparable. I exercise my 2nd amendment rights daily‚just like VISA‚

northtown (Anonymous) says‚I also have a permit to carry,and did not find it that difficuft to obtain. But own land in another county and obtained permit there,just because i did not want douglas co. to gain anything from me!!!! Rather pay a poor county than the you the so called wealthy!!!Take a drive.look at the houses in this county!

ImTooOldForThis (Anonymous) says‚My my. Paranoid males with tiny penis. Do you really need to carry a concealed weapon? This is frickin Kansas you idiots. Trust me, I grew up in NYC and didnt need a gun. Just my fists if nessecary. Paraniod rednecks certianly shouldnt be carrying guns.

RonBurgandy (Anonymous) says‚Congratulations. You can fire a gun.

Clearly, this isn't the highest level of discourse on the subject of Kansas' concealed carry permits.

But is this a conversation that any group of people would have in person, or even on the phone? My guess is no.

The cloak of anonymity provided by the Web and ljworld's registration policy creates an open forum for nearly everyone with something to say.

And it doesn't matter if it's relevant to the story, or if it adds anything to the flow of information. This despite ljworld's goal of encouraging such behavior.

I don't mean to single out the otherwise-awesome ljworld on this topic. It could easily apply to every newspaper Web site that allows for anonymous user registration and a moderate-after-the-fact comment policy.

As more sites adopt content management systems that provide the ability for users to post comments on stories and other data types, publishers and other higher-ups must start making decisions about how that interaction should be managed.

If this most basic of user-submitted content can't be handled, what will become of users' videos, photos and stories?

Some sites such as nytimes.com have prevented the degradation of their story comments by moderating every comment in a manner similar to a letter to the editor section in print. In fact, they hired a team of 11 to accomplish this -- something most newspapers can't afford to do.

Another method of sorting the good from the bad is by employing a reputation model within user profiles, something nytimes does as well.

Lawrence.com, the entertainment site for ljworld, did this with their "karma" feature, which is currently a core part of Django's add-on comments system. Unfortunately, this feature seemed to fall short of the creators' expectations (read the comments of the previous link).

Another take on karma points comes from vita.mn, the entertainment site of the Star Tribune. Their site doesn't use Django, but the approach is the same:

Karma is vita.mn's scoring system for users. The more you contribute, and the more others respond to your contributions, the higher your karma score. Tagging something, writing a review, submitting a photo, responding to a list ... these are some of the many ways to up your karma. And if you create something other users really dig, your score will skyrocket.

In other words, the more quality content you contribute to the site, the higher your karma score. And not only that, you're rewarded for your efforts:

...we'll have regular contests rewarding those users who are really rocking the karma. From time to time, our top users might find themselves on special invite-only guest lists.

Like Django's karma, the system appears to rely on other users' and automation brought about by clever programming to determine the score.

Act like an ass-hat, and your score falls. Perform acts of user-generated bravery, and your score rises. The higher your score, the more credibility your contributions hold.

Taken to another level, karma points could be managed in a way similar to Digg's comments system. Users with low or negative karma would have their comments hidden from the rest of the users based on personal preference.

But get too low, and you could be banned from the site.

Here's how Digg puts it in their FAQ:

Really don't like what someone says in the comments? After you bury a comment [comments cannot be unburied], there is a block icon next to the name of the comment submitter. Clicking the block icon will allow you to block that person's comments, which means that you will no longer see their comments when you view comments across the site. If you've accidentally blocked someone and wish to unblock them, you can do so in your profile account settings. If you don't want to necessarily block the user completely but you want to report them for being inappropriate, choose the report feature after burying a comment. If enough people report someone, that person will not be able to participate in the comments for a period of time.

Unfortunately, none of this is without human intervention to some degree. A user-interaction manager needs to be the judge for whether a user in violation of site policy needs to be removed.

And even the most elaborate system -- Digg is a good example -- can be gamed to the benefit of some, and detriment of others.

The best solution to managing user comments on newspaper sites, at least in my opinion, is by leveraging a reputation management system in user profiles with the knowledge of an online-savvy moderator.

This, combined with a clearly stated goal for user comments -- what are you trying to accomplish with user comments (any financial benefits?) -- will not only help improve the level of discourse among readers, but also further the journalism being done.

Note: MediaShift has published an excellent entry discussing this topic, and what several newspaper companies have done as a solution to the issue.