The New York Times
The New York Times has a team of eight moderators on staff to review reader comments, but according to the paper’s public editor eight is not enough.
Arthur Brisbane has devoted two recent columns to the topic of reader comments. The first, earlier this month, focused on reader concerns with the moderation process. The second featured reader responses and suggestions for improving the comments section.
Brisbane writes that despite having a team dedicated to moderating conversation on NYTimes.com, not every story is open to comments, and others are closed “early” due to the overwhelming volume of reader responses.
Those challenges, Brisbane writes, lead to complaints and conspiracy theories from readers:
“Having opened Pandora’s box of comments, The Times now faces a huge challenge meeting reader expectations. Some of the problems could be fixed, I believe, by more communication from The Times — more frequent and prominent explanation of things like comment cutoffs.”
Brisbane argues that additional staff or improved moderation tools may be necessary to keep up with the workload. Among the suggestions from readers: train citizen moderators, enforce a shorter word limit on comments, and eliminate anonymous commenting.
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