Uncivil dialogue: Commenting and stories about indigenous people - Editor's Blog

1.12.15

Uncivil dialogue: Commenting and stories about indigenous people - Editor's Blog: If you follow industry trends, you'll know that the value of commenting on media websites has been debated for years.

Many publishers, including some newspaper sites in Canada, have shut comments down. Others have turned the commenting function on their websites over to third-party social media platforms such as Facebook.

As Fortune's Mathew Ingram recently wrote, there are common complaints cited whenever a publisher makes this move: comment sections breed trolls and "garbage"; the proportion of readers that leaves comments is small compared with the general audience; it costs a lot of money and time to manage and moderate this community; and there are social media platforms better suited for this type of conversation.

Much of that is true.