Does anybody know how NY Times decides to include or omit a comment section from articles? Seems random
Bassey Etim, Community Manager for the New York Times:
The vast majority of NYT comments are handled by a human moderator. This means that we have to make an editorial decision about which comment threads we will open for comments each day. Also, we adhere to a sort-of "slow moderation" theory, which posits that the best way to respect the commenting efforts of our readership is to ensure that their comments exist in an urbane, literate environment. (Definitely not an approach that is good for everyone, but it works fabulously for us, for reasons you can probably divine.) Our goal is to have every NYT comment thread offer tangible added value to each article for our readership.
The costs to this approach are obvious -- it takes a long time, and many stories do not get comments. But NYT readers expect the highest-quality everything from us, so that's what we deliver.
To answer the root of your question, these are our general criteria for opening a story for comment, generally in order of importance:
- News value of the story
- Projected reader interest in the story
- Have we recently had comments on this issue?
- Whether we can moderate the projected # of comments in a timely fashion.
https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-NYT-determine-which-artic...
Why No Comments? It’s a Matter of Resources
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/reader-center/comments-mo...
The Times Sharply Increases Articles Open for Comments, Using Google’s Technology
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/insider/have-a-comment-le...
wow, interesting approach
I would like this more if there was an easier way to find the other article
Like a moderator linking to the prior comment section similar to how dang does here