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Looks like our blogs are being attacked by comment spam. As a result, comments are disabled to keep the servers (and blogs) from crashing.

Feel free to e-mail me if you want to comment. I can post them when we've sorted through this problem or we can communicate one-on-one offline.

Friday update: You can now comment, but you need to register with TypeKey

The neat thing about the online world is that you are judged almost entirely by your actions, usually based on just your fingers.

If you do generous things, people think you are a generous person.
If you bully people, people assume you are a bully.
If you ask dumb questions, people figure you're dumb.
Answer questions well and people assume you're smart and generous.
... you get the idea.

That's from Seth Godin. a popular, well-traveled blogger. I pass it along because of its insight into online behavior, and you all know how interested I am in online behavior...and misbehavior. I've been thinking about the Jekyll and Hyde digital behavior of some folks. Too many people -- describing some bloggers and commenters -- say to me, "Do you know him, I mean, personally? It's funny because he is as nice and reasonable a person you'll meet. But when he gets online, he's a name-calling, finger-pointing maniac." I know, it's probably said about me, too.

One of Godin's insights:
3. When you hear from someone, consider the source. Trolls are almost always trolls through and through, which means that you have no obligation to listen, to respond or to placate. On the other hand, if you can find a germ of truth, can't hurt to consider it.

The biggest takeaway for me is this: online interactions are largely expected to be intentional. On purpose. Planned. People assume you did stuff for a reason.

Be clear, be generous, be kind. Can't hurt.

Just saying.

I don't like anonymous comments, as I've said many times before. I think people should be accountable for what they say, especially when what they say attacks someone else.

Still, I wouldn't go so far as to make them unlawful, which is apparently under consideration in Idaho. The government doesn't need to get involved, and the potential harm is much greater than any benefit.

It's the responsibility of the host forum or the users to set the guidelines around comments, not the government. That said, I doubt this proposal will get very far.

I don't necessarily want to restart the comments about comments with this post. I think we've talked it to death for now. Still, as I was thinking about ways to make the discussions on this blog more constructive last night, I came across this compelling argument via Twitter.

How does the broken windows theory apply to online spaces? Perhaps like so:

Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what extent people are encouraged to "own" their words. When forums, message boards, and blog comment threads with more than a handful of participants are unmoderated, bad behavior follows. The appearance of one troll encourages others. Undeleted hateful or ad hominem comments are an indication that that sort of thing is allowable behavior and encourages more of the same. Those commenters who are normally respectable participants are emboldened by the uptick in bad behavior and misbehave themselves. More likely, they're discouraged from helping with the community moderation process of keeping their peers in line with social pressure. Or they stop visiting the site altogether.

Jason Kottke wrote that. He's been around the blogging block before many of us were riding tricycles on the driveway.

That said, we require people to register to leave comments on our stories. While this is still a new option on our site, it is growing, people are behaving themselves, and many of the comments are helpful.

If I banned infantile and mean-spirited comments, would I get fewer commenters or more?

Just an idle thought on a cold Saturday.

A warmer Wednesday update: Ryan Thornberg, an assistant professor of journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill posts his list of rules for building community.

Many readers know I have a love-hate relationship with comments. I have come to terms with it all. I sent this to the staff today:

It has been a long time coming, but I'm pleased to tell you officially that we have begun enabling comments on some stories on the Web site. As soon as the testing is complete, most stories will allow comments from Web visitors.

That gives us one more way to talk with, listen to and help our readers, to say nothing of letting them help us. As you know, our ultimate goal is to help build a community of people who want to talk with each other in a safe, civil environment. As the local newspaper, we can provide that.

Here's what it means to you.

Your ownership of your story doesn't end when it is published. You have introduced the story into the community, and you maintain some responsibility for hosting the conversation.

When you participate in the conversation -- answering questions, correcting assumptions, acknowledging commenter corrections of you, and encouraging people to help you -- you show you care about your story and the community. It also gives the discussion more credibility because people know that the person who wrote the story is there to talk with.

We do not expect the toxic atmosphere that you may have read about elsewhere taking over the site. As the host of the Debatables blog for the last year, I can assure you that 99% of the comments are not only worth publishing, but they also provoke a good discussion.

Remember John Lennon: "The love you take is equal to the love you make." So be professional and respectful. Your civility will be contagious. If you have a problem with a comment or a commenter violating our terms of service, holler. We aren't afraid of deleting offensive comments or banning violators and trolls, if it comes to that.

My expectation is that when you're working in the office you check your story for comments throughout the day. More likely, you’ll be in and out all day. At a minimum, check in before you leave for the day. (Unlike the blogs, you won't get an e-mail every time someone leaves a comment.) You don't have to respond every time a comment is left, but don't be a wallflower, either.

If you are already a Drupal user, your username and password will work. If you haven't signed up yet, please do so. The link is in the top right of the home page.

Questions?

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

We are opening comments on a few select stories to test our registration/comment system.

Help us find any bugs.

Registration will be required to interact within the site. It's easy and requires a working e-mail address, which will be a hindrance to some of the commenters on this blog. Register now so you can get your favorite user name! (You can still read the stories and view the videos without registering.)

Commenters Fred Gregory and jaycee and I have been carrying on a conversation/debate about when comments should be deleted. (Some of the conversation has occurred off-line.)

It was provoked by a particularly offensive comment someone made on this post about Tony Snow's passing.

Fred suggested I delete the comment because it "is beneath contempt." While I don't disagree with his evaluation of the comment, I am reluctant to delete it.

It doesn't expressly violate our terms of use that I can tell. (The terms even warn users that By using the Online Service web sites, you may be exposed to Content that you may find offensive, indecent, inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise objectionable.)

It also pushes me further into the gray area of deciding which comments are contemptible and which aren't. And I am not convinced I am the best judge of that. (Now I pretty much only delete comments that insult other commenters or contain profanity. And I've probably only had to do that a dozen or so times.)

I also think that other readers can judge for themselves the intelligence and value of comments. When someone says something stupid, it usually comes across as stupid.

But I could be wrong. Should I tighten the comment policy?

We knew the letter from the chairman of TIMCO was a big news story. It is not often you get one company publicly accusing the other of pirating employees and threatening legal action. At least not here.

But I didn't realize it would evoke such involved, generally intelligent discussion as it has at Debatables. Thirty comments and counting.

It becomes my latest prime example of why newspapers should enable comments on its stories. Passionate discussion among readers on a topic of intense interest. Some leads for us to follow. Maybe some understanding arising from disagreement.

Because our publishing system makes commenting on stories difficult, we created Debatables. We're in the midst of moving to Drupal, with the ability to enable comments directly on stories. Finally.

One of the common complaints about newspaper-based Web sites goes something like this: "You don't publish anonymous letters in the newspaper so why do you permit anonymous comments on the Web site." I don't like anonymous comments, either, but they fit with the culture of the Web. The comments on the TIMCO story demonstrate another good reason to permit them.

Would any of the commenters write a letter to the editor with their names? We'll see. I doubt we'll get as many as have joined the conversation. Some seem to have much to add and a good reason to hide their identity.

The world is changing.

In a private e-mail about our very brief history of Greensboro reader participation thing, a reader sadly observes that one-third of the comments are about race in some way: Skip and Earl, the International Civil Rights Museum and the 1979 shootings.

And people say we make it all about race.

The reader's six-word comment: Your commenters lead bitter, miserable lives.

I scoff at such sentiment. I mock it. I deny it!

Your life isn't miserable, is it?

Banning commenters isn't a bad thing.

Given that I'm among those who have done it recently, this position may not surprise anyone. Judging from the angry screams of outrage when a commenter is banned, you might think that an injustice has occurred.

Nah. Banning seems to be a last resort everywhere. Including here. But I am beginning to appreciate its value. And I wonder what took me so long.

I take the view that comments are pretty much open so long as commenters follow our terms of use. I have given commenters what I consider broad latitude to have their say. I have thought for a while that that practice has actually discouraged anyone but those with thick skins to enter the discussion. Shouldn't have to be that way.

Despite what some think and say, banning commenters has nothing to do with hostility toward opposing positions or arrogance or or fragile egos or cowardice. Anyone who reads this blog can easily determine that opposing positions are frequent and not feared. It's not a freedom of speech or censorship issue, either. There is no inalienable right to comment here.

Essentially, commenters need to treat me and others with respect. It is not an unreasonable rule. If you think it is, start your own blog and make your own rules.

My preference is that commenters discuss ideas and bring something to the table. Making assumptions about why I or others might say something, throwing out vague accusations, or stating opinion as fact without any back-up occur on the blog and in face-to-face conversation. But they don't add much. One of the potential values of written exchanges is that they allow for time and thought. So, presumably, the conversation could be conducted on a higher plane.

That's the goal. If some voices have to be banned to get there, so be it.

Frequent commenter Beau Dure, who writes with insight even though you may not always agree, does it again on Poynter's E-Media Tidbits.

Beau writes about "beneficial elitism" and "harmful elitism" as it pertains to journalists and bloggers. It's an important and knowing distinction.

...On (the Online-News) list, as in all forums, we sometimes fall into the trap of harmful elitism. We assume others 'don't get it.' 'Oh, that Roy Peter Clark guy? Yeah, he's just a newspaper guy. I don't have to listen to him.' We're prone to offering up easy answers for newspapers' ills, conveniently forgetting how wrong this list's conventional wisdom has been in the past.

Whether or not you like my proposed harmful/beneficial dichotomy, I think it helps to look at things through new frames. The 'blogger vs. journalist' meme didn't die despite Jay Rosen's best efforts, but at least we can step outside it every once in a while. 'Liberal vs. conservative' is utterly meaningless, given the fluidity of the terms. Even 'old school vs. new school' isn't particularly helpful. If we weren't a little bit of both, why would we be on this list?

I know it's me, sometimes.

People are commenting on a couple of posts here, but, for some reason, the comments aren't being posted, which normally is an automatic process. I know that people are commenting because I get the automatic e-mail message of each new comment.

I have alerted the people who know about such things and hope the fix will be in sooner rather than later. If the aforementioned comments don't go up automatically, I will cut and paste from the e-mails so your sentiments won't be lost.

My apologies.

Monday update: We first lost the comments, then we lost the ability to post altogether. But we're back. I think I've posted the comments from you that I got, but if I missed some, have at it!

What does it mean when you're the last commenter on a thread?

* Does it mean you quieted the crowd with such powerful wisdom that they are speechless before your inner-Einstein? That once you've spoken nothing else need be said?

* Does it mean that you've killed the conversation? That your comment was so off-point or so mean that everyone stares at you speechlessly as if you've accused the Pope of committing one of the seven deadly sins?

* Does it mean that everyone else has weighed in with everything there is to say that is remotely meaningful and you're late to the party? That you haven't bothered to read the other comments before yours to see what has already been said?

* Does it mean that you don't know when that an argument has reached its point of diminishing returns and you keep repeating the same thing? That the time has come to agree to disagree and move on?

I've deleted more comments than usual lately on this blog and on Debatables, primarily because anonymous people make abusive and profane comments. It's a mystery to me why they do it. Does it make them feel good? Do they think they're being clever? If you're anonymous, how do you get credit? Odd.

Anyway, commenters have a big playing field, and we give them latitude to take the conversation off point, and to use grammatical constructions and misspellings that would make a dyslexic scream in horror. We don't count off for the irrational or just plain head-shaking silly. We figure the audience can tell what has value.

But we draw the line at abusing other commenters, at using profanity and racial and sexual epithets, and at making personal attacks. Those comments contribute nothing, and there's no reason to permit them. Yet, some people don't understand that. So I kill the comment -- no warning, no -- and leave a note explaining why. Frankly, it's fun to read the next outraged posting from the commenter.

While it's a matter of debate which comments deserves deletion and which are reasonable opinion, I do have an arbitrary latitude scale to help me sort through it:

Sign your real name and real e-mail address: 80% degree of latitude.
Use a pseudonymn but be a regular with a track record: 50%.
A drop-in anonymous comment: 20%
A drop-in anonymous comment with a silly sign-on: 10%

Not scientific, but it helps.

I hesitate to tip the canoe, but after all the trouble we have had with conversation that either devolves into something inane or escalates into an Ann Coulter shouting match, we've had a breakthrough.

On the Debatables blog, the discussion about the reassignment of the athletic director at A&T has carried on all weekend and commenters are sharing information with each other. Not just opinions, but actual usable information. And while most don't identify themselves by name, which is my strong preference, many indicate they are alums.

The way it's supposed to be.

Update: On the other hand....

Beau Dure used to work at this newspaper back in the '90s, but I know him better through his comments on this blog than I did when he was here. He's smart and insightful as he shows in these comments reproduced at Journalism Hope. With that intro, you probably aren't surprised that I agree with him.

The bottom line: Newspapers could have done everything "right" -- all the suggestions from this list, minus the things never caught on -- and still found themselves in the situation they're in today. The marketplace is fragmenting. Prime-time network TV is losing viewers. Tower Records is gone. Forty years ago, everyone could name a Beatles song; today, most people don't know any of the songs in the Top 10. We simply have too many options....

As the market fragments, traditional newspapers will decline....But there will be opportunities for good journalism....

So we've established niche media while transforming traditional media - perhaps more slowly than intended -- into something new. We've learned a lot along the way from both successes and failures, both small and spectacular.

Despite what you may read on journalism sites and blogs, many of us do understand the market we're in and the skills we need. Our challenge is to move more quickly understand where the audience is, where it is going and how to serve it.

He mentions his experiences and observations commenting on this blog.

I'm as much a fan of the blogging experiments in Greensboro as the next Online-Newser - probably moreso, since I spent four terrific years at the N&R. But judging from the agenda-driven comments on John Robinson's blog, my old editor in Wilmington probably got better feedback in the steam room at the Y than John is getting online.

I don't know about the feedback at the Y -- my experience is that a pretty good place to talk to the audience -- but he has a point about some comments here. Some do go to all the same places -- usually trashing the paper for one sin or another. Really, it's not all that different from conversations I have with people on the street. The criticism in person is usually more polite, but it can also be equally blunt and mean-spirited.

Other conversations are quite robust, helpful and stimulating -- both in person and on the blog. And they make it worth it.