Dialogue or Diatribe?

By Ellyn Angelotti
Interactivity Editor

Take the User Commenting Survey and tell us how your news organization regulates user feedback.

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"Poynter's Take on User Comments" By Bill Mitchell Read News Organizations' User Agreements

This survey is a tool meant to compile information about how news organizations across the world are handling user comments on their Web sites.

This will open a pop-up window with a form. If you have any questions, please contact me.

In a portion of our survey, we posed the following questions:

How much do you screen users' comments before posting them?

How much do you screen their comments after posting them?

How much do you allow other readers/viewers/listeners to screen and flag comments?

I synthesized the anecdotes we received through the survey to a more quantitative format by sorting the results based on two approaches: 1) who screens the comments (no one, users, staff, or users and staff) and 2) when and to what extent the comments are screened (not flagged, edited or spiked at all; flagged, edited or spiked before the comment was posted on the Web site; or flagged, edited or spiked after the comment was posted on the Web site)

I put this information into a spreadsheet and uploaded it to Swivel.com, a really helpful (and free) tool for displaying information from a spreadsheet or database using a variety of tables and graphs. You can also browse through data that other users have posted to the site.

Below are the results from survey so far displayed in a bar graph and a data cloud.

See this same data displayed through a variety of graphs, tables and charts.

Bar Graph: How do news organizations screen user comments?


Data Cloud: How do news organizations screen user comments?
In a data cloud, the size of the text is relative to the number of responses in that category. So, the more responses of a certain type, the bigger the text appears. I find that this format was the best way for me to understand the survey results.


One clear trend has emerged so far: Most news organizations that responded approve comments before posting them online. Several organizations involve users in that monitoring process.

We want to hear from more. Take the user comment survey for yourself.

Take the User Commenting Survey and tell us how your news organization regulates user feedback.

This will open a pop-up window with a form. If you have any questions, please contact Ellyn Angelotti at (727) 456-2375.