If you don’t want comments on your website, that’s fine, don’t have them. But don’t act like comments are some sort of intractable problem that can’t be realistically addressed by mortals. They’re not... you could fix this, but your priorities are elsewhere.... Having threads that close, having moderators that redirect entrenched disagreements,…

"at some point, you start to crave something with more substance. Today’s readers want more than listicles and clickbait, and this is driving meaningful change across the digital publishing industry... In the maelstrom of Internet content, we are drawn to articles that make clear promises for what we will get out of them, as well as those that …

My EuropCom 2015 workshop on online communities is taking shape. (Update: view all slideshows and key takeways from the session) According to the EuropCom2015 site it'll be held after lunch on Day 1, and will cover:Convening and managing an online community is an extremely effective way of achieving communications goals, but will probably fai…

So the question at hand is how to keep your community alive and thriving. Or, on the flip side, here are the top 15 ways to (inadvertently) to kill an online community: - How To Kill An Online Community In 15 Easy Steps | Vanessa DiMauro | LinkedIn

The Coral Project aims to change how publishers, contributors and readers think about interacting in online communities ... to further opportunities for online engagement, extending beyond comments into conversations and contributor contributions... The goal of the open-source software is to enable publishers to better manage contributions and …

sixth edition of the annual report series provides a snapshot of the progress and changes in community management approaches and highlights emerging standards. This year, TheCR analyzed data from more than 200 communities representing a broad range of community sizes and sectors to measure community maturity and its relationship to member engageme…

"Networks are pretty good for collisions. Bureaucracies are pretty bad for collisions." - Why I Write on Medium — The Message — Medium

Some really advanced techniques in handling trolls here - The Internet’s Most Trolled Cartoonist — The Nib — Medium

“In fact, the very point was to get them, and these comments, off my pages,” - After deciding to charge for comments, Tablet’s conversation moves…to Facebook » Nieman Journalism Lab

I need three speakers for a EuropCom2015 workshop to share their thoughts on convening and managing communities in the context of public communications and policymaking. The following throwaway remark on Linkedin landed me with the task of setting up a workshop at EuropCom 2015:"I'd suggest combining "Setting-up and managing online …

I quite enjoyed the experience of reposting to Medium, and really like how Medium is evolving as a platform, particularly how they are… … re-imagining comments with Highlight, Comment & Respond… these three interactive features echo the ‘nibble, bite, meal’ content model, but in the other direction, from you back to the …

Comment moderation and online community management strategies for news organisations, but relevant to government sites too: "Comments are a way for readers to connect with one another, and with the journalists and editors reporting the news. But ... can quickly turn uncivil, and news organizations often don’t have the resources or manpower to con…

Good case study, concluding with observations on the role of journalists which also apply to government communicators: "An engaged journalist's role in the 21st century is not only to inform but to bring readers directly into the conversation through... real-time coverage, alternative story forms, crowdsourcing, beat blogging, user-generated co…

A whole load of recommnendations for the UK's House of Commons, including some intriguing ones - eg: "We believe the public want the opportunity to have their say in House of Commons debates; we also believe that this will provide a useful resource for MPs and help to enhance those debates. We therefore recommend a unique experiment: the use of…

"Crowdsourcing is not about work. Crowdsourcing is about community. Without a solid community, you get not-solid results from your crowdsourcing endeavor.... The goal of many of these tactics is not to stop assholes from being assholes, just to slow them down and demotivate them from destroying your community." - Crowdsourcing isn’t broken — Bac…

"While we've always loved a good chart and map at Vox, appreciating a chart or map does not data journalism make. Data journalism is not just data visualization... ... the explosion in data sources readily available on the web... can both aid in telling important and necessary stories, but can also be easily misunderstood and potentially manipula…

" online comments can be worth having, if the publisher puts the work in." Excellent case study. Found this stat particularly interesting: "Users who log in, which is required if you want to comment, view seven pages per session on average, while non-registered users make it to only 1.7" I'd suggest that users who both view 4 times as much conte…

"Guardian digital editor Aron Pilhofer say killing off comments is a “monumental mistake.”... ... many traditional newsrooms are failing to take full advantage of the web’s ability to create a two-way relationship with readers, and that this is a crucial element of what journalism has become in a digital age... ... "You see site after site movin…

"handing over a key component of your relationship with readers to Twitter and Facebook is a mistake... suggests to readers that their comments and interaction aren’t worth the trouble" [If] "Comments are broken ... that’s not the fault of readers — it’s the fault of publishers for not seeing their relationship with their readers as being of valu…

Interesting research: "Seventy different political posts were randomly either left to their own wild devices, engaged by an unidentified staffer from the station, or engaged by a prominent political reporter. When the reporter showed up, “incivility decreased by 17 percent and people were 15 percent more likely to use evidence in their comments on…

How do we want to communicate with each other? ... what kind of communicator would we actually want to use?... How do you signal that you're available to talk about movies, but not to talk about work? As we talk to more people more of the time, we'll also need smarter status indicators and smarter ways to break down conversations. The closest t…

"Every new platform that relies on user generated content depends on influential users who make the platform indispensable, thereby attracting larger numbers of users to try it out. But it's a Catch 22; the platform needs the influencers to make it indispensable, but these users won't become addicted unless it's already indispensable" Same 'vic…

Good overview of the year+ - long debate about comments, trolls & social media, "from the baby-and-the-bathwater dept ... This sudden disdain for traditional comments raises the question: is Facebook somehow immune to stupid comments? Is forcing all news conversation on to Facebook's terms really an improvement in meaningful dialogue?... It's lik…

Interesting reaction to Reuters, who argued "Much of the well-informed and articulate discussion around news... has moved to social media and online forums... But is that enough justification for giving up comments? ... not everyone is on Twitter, and not everyone is on Facebook, and so any conversation or interaction that occurs there will be in…

What happened when 60 odd people had a go at the Participation mindmap?

"Staff also emphasizes building relationships between readers and journalists... strengthen reader engagement by making writers, experts in their field, more visible to build a closer relationship between them and readers, and by encouraging readers to contribute with insights. (At De Correspondent, subscribers are “members” while comments are ref…

""How to stop trolling online?” is the question of the moment. From [Quora's] inception, its efforts have been geared towards “making quality scale,” ... also meant keep making the application a safe place for users to write... It has introduced a new anti-harassment feature, where users are prompted to flag any comment or post ... Quora moderat…

Unsurprising that LinkedIn promoted this post.... the comments rapidly turned into an interesting conversation on Linkedin v. Facebook... people seem to comment more on LinkedIn posts than elsewhere. Perhaps the return of blogging that people are starting to talk about is next.

"Your community, as it grows, is not really your choice. ... Your first 10 members will define your 100 will define your 1,000 will define your 1,000,000. The only choice you have as a business and as a host is who you invite to be your first 10-100 members. After that, you sort of have to get out of the way and then meet the needs of this new thi…

"Continuing its tradition of airing its internal discussions outside the office, the staff at Jezebel today called out the higher-ups at parent Gawker Media today over some pretty disgusting trolling at the site." I wonder how much more loyalty Jezebel's community feel for the site because they air their internal problems so publicly? I wonder ho…