No comment(s) on wfaa.com
05/16/09 09:41 AM
By ED BARK
Lamenting the lack of civility by "a handful of users," Dallas-based WFAA8 has at least temporarily suspended comments on its Web site, wfaa.com.
The announcement was posted on Friday at 7:48 p.m. (central) by operations manager Doug Boehner, who said that "abusive comments have caused harm to families and friends of those who have been the subject of news stories and other users."
Boehner said that wfaa.com will decide in the "next several weeks" whether to re-enable comments or permanently end them.
The ABC station also is asking readers to express their views on comments. As of mid-Saturday morning, 331 respondents had chosen one of these five available options:
Enjoyed comments and want them back -- 31.42%
Enjoyed comments, but understand why they are gone -- 40.79%
Knew about comments, but ignored them -- 4.83%
Glad the comments are gone -- 20.24%
What comments? -- 2.72%
WFAA8's Web site easily attracts more comments than its local TV rivals. The station's synergistic, across-the-driveway partner, The Dallas Morning News, so far is keeping comments on dallasnews.com.
It can be a tricky business. D magazine's frontburner.com blog recently disabled reader comments because too many of them were deemed unseemly or counter-productive. This has triggered an active and ongoing in-house debate on whether that's making the site less relevant and engaging.
Comments remain in place on unclebarky.com, although I've occasionally considered removing them. In reality, though, I've only had to delete a half-dozen or so comments since this Web site became a reality on Sept. 17, 2006. Most readers have been bracingly civil, even if some are ever-acidic or juvenile.
But hey kids, it's a rough-and-tumble world out there, and I find myself continuing to learn a lot by reading the comments. Useful information and story tips also are regularly supplied by people who really are "insiders" at various TV stations.
So all in all, I think this would be a lesser Web site without the comments. Then again, what do I know? I'm still not tweeting. Any comments?
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