The Spokesman-Review
A panel in Idaho's legislature rejected a bill that would have forced newspapers to disclose the identities of commenters in the event of a lawsuit, Betsy Z. Russell reports in The Spokesman-Review. Last summer, Idaho Judge John Patrick Luster ordered The Spokesman-Review to reveal the name of a commenter after a Kootenai County politician sued the paper, saying she'd been libeled in a comments section in a blog post.

That commenter revealed herself before it came to that. But there's an interesting footnote to the story of the rejected bill: It was submitted by Rep. Stephen Hartgen, the former publisher of The Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News. When a fellow representative asked Hartgen why the legislature needed to get involved in "rules within the judicial system,” Hartgen replied that Luster's ruling was "narrow." “This is an area of the law which has evolved to the point where anonymous blog comments are part of our daily life," Russell reports he said. (Here's a copy of his bill, which misstates the name of the politician whose suit inspired it, red meat for an anonymous commenter if I've ever seen it.) (more...)

Seattle Weekly
Seattle Times sports columnist Steve Kelley has standard reasons for retiring at 63: "I find myself at a lot more games thinking 'I've written this story 411 times now. Isn't that enough?'" he tells Seattle Weekly contributor Rick Anderson.

But another complaint puts him squarely in league with former Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette and fans of science writing: ""The reader comments section, it's a free-for-all," Kelley said.

"The level of discourse has become so inane and nasty. And it's not just at the Times, it's ESPN, everywhere - people, anonymous people, take shots at the story, writers, each other. Whatever you've achieved in that story gets drowned out by this chorus of idiots."

Kelley says he won't write a farewell column. His last column will run near the end of January, Anderson says.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
People who read newspaper and magazine reports on science "may be influenced as much by the comments at the end of the story as they are by the report itself," a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers says.

2,000 subjects who read "a balanced news report about nanotechnology" saw either civil or rowdy comments, Mark Johnson reports in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"Disturbingly, readers' interpretations of potential risks associated with the technology described in the news article differed significantly depending only on the tone of the manipulated reader comments posted with the story," wrote authors Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele.

(more...)

NPR.org | MinnPost | Charleston Gazette | Vancouver Sun | MarketWatch
NPR switched its user commenting to the Disqus platform this week, and is increasing its moderation efforts in response to user demand.

It took the unusual step of sending readers an email survey in advance, asking for ideas and feedback about how to improve the commenting system. More than 6,000 responded. The big surprise, social media product manager Kate Myers writes, is that readers called for more comment moderation.

We asked this question in our recent NPR audience survey: (more...)

Seattle Weekly | The Spokesman-Review | NPR | Los Angeles Times
An Idaho judge ruled on July 10 that The Spokesman-Review had 14 days to reveal the identity of an online commenter after a Kootenai County politician sued the paper, claiming the commenter libeled her. On July 24 the paper reported that the commenter had revealed herself: Linda Cook, who's also active in county politics.

Judge John Patrick Luster also waded into the question of whether the staffer who removed Cook's comment from the newspaper blog was entitled to journalistic protections, Rick Anderson writes in Seattle Weekly:

Idaho doesn't have a reporter's shield law, to protect sources, and even if it did, Luster said, [Spokesman-Review blogger Dave] Oliveria was not acting as a journalist, in the judge's view. Oliveria, who removed the comment a few hours after it was posted, was merely the "facilitator of commentary and administrator of the blog."

Protections thus didn't apply to the paper, nor to the commenter, the judge said (though he did turn down Jacobson's request for the names of two other commenters). "While the individuals are entitled to the right of anonymous free speech, this right is clearly limited when abused," Luster wrote.

The case put the newspaper in the position of defending its website comments, which its columnist Shawn Vestal called a "sewer of stupidity and insults and shallowness." After the news of the ruling broke, Vestal wrote, the paper's comments section went nuts: (more...)

TechCrunch
A study of South Korean website commenters adds to the debate over whether requiring real names improves online discourse. Gregory Ferenstein writes:

For 4 years, Koreans enacted increasingly stiff real-name commenting laws, first for political websites in 2003, then for all websites receiving more than 300,000 viewers in 2007, and was finally tightened to 100,000 viewers a year later after online slander was cited in the suicide of a national figure. The policy, however, was ditched shortly after a Korean Communications Commission study found that it only decreased malicious comments by 0.9%. Korean sites were also inundated by hackers, presumably after valuable identities.

The study, he writes, provides some real data to combat the theorizing that using real names fosters better online discourse. His conclusion: "The presence of some phantom judgmental audience doesn’t seem to make us better versions of ourselves." (more...)

Adweek | Mental Floss
Ryan Broderick has a job I suspect would make me flee the grid after about two days: He's BuzzFeed's community manager, responsible for combing through about 22,000 comments a month, reports Adweek's Charlie Warzel. Broderick says comments, even the worst ones, have a socio-biological explanation:

“There is a social realm where things are rationally sorted and then there’s the anonymous place that brings out a person’s base instincts. It can become a frothing, bubbling cauldron of insanity,” he said. “Yet, you need that animalistic part of yourself. I think of it almost like your sex drive.”

Both Broderick and Huffington Post community manager Justin Isaf defend anonymous commenting, however: "Anonymity can do amazing, extremely creative things if you believe in it," Broderick says.

Mental Floss' Chris Higgins spotlights a video from popular vlogger Ze Frank in which he tries to get inside the head of a troll: On a video about optical illusions, Ze Frank says, "Some young gentlemen said they wanted to punch me in the face because my voice was so annoying. I can easily see how someone could find my voice annoying, but an annoying voice doesn't generally warrant a face-punching." (more...)