Editor’s note: Reader comments in the age of social media

This was a lot more possible years back, before the rise of social sharing and syndication. Your typical comments section on any given blog -- especially interest-based or topic-based blogs -- could be reasonably intelligent and informative. This is one of the big tradeoffs we've made, inadvertently, by making sharing and distribution so much easier.

In the present day, audiences are much more heterogeneous, having come across any given article through dozens of different channels. They have nothing in common. They probably have no particular affiliation with, or respect for, the publication or blog they've stumbled across. Likewise, they don't know, respect, or care about their fellow commenters. Many don't even see themselves as commenters on a particular site, so much as drive-by taggers. They don't expect to stick around, so much as to shout something out and hope people see it. (Or to astroturf a particular link).

Reuters probably made the right call here. I don't know anybody who regularly reads Reuters in and of itself. Most of its readership is distributed and ad hoc, as its articles are widely syndicated across print and the web. That's a perfect recipe for a terrible comments section.

Note: some people think real identities vs. anonymity plays a big role in comment quality. I haven't yet seen this to be the case. Some of the smartest boards, comments sections, etc., are full of users with anonymous handles. (Though it's key that the handles be permanent, and that the users behind them feel a sense of identity attached to them). Conversely, I've seen "real people" make some downright spammy, idiotic, racist, and generally useless comments on major sites and networks. Identity matters, but it's about more than the name.

I'm not sure that's universally true.

I often see comments lacking substance get highly upvoted largely because people who might have a different opinion would be participating and conversing on a different platform instead of the source website. And so, bias voting can skew what rises to the top.

I think you are right, but let's challenge 'lazy' -- you could instead say that they don't think they will get sufficient benefit -- either to their editorial mission or to their bottom line -- from expending further resources into trying to make comments not suck.

if so, it seems likely they are right. A comments section don't bring customers, doesn't make them look good, and probably won't be missed by most (paying or not) readers. There are other places on the net where discussions happen, more so than 10 years ago, and I'm not sure why you think taking account of that fact is a 'terrible excuse'.

It provided a veneer of user engagement, but how often did reporters or editors participate in comments? How often did reporters change their reporting based on comments? How often did they credit comments in their reporting?

Newspaper comments have been a ghetto for years.

BTW, the same criticisms apply to the comments of most newspaper Facebook pages. Facebook for most publishers is simply a distribution channel--post your stories to your page, hope EdgeRank pushes them into enough user news feeds, and then wait for the traffic to land back on your site. The comments don't matter at all.

The real conversation happens on Facebook when users share the news content--either by re-sharing what Reuters posts, or by sharing it themselves from the website. Then they talk about it with their friends. That's what Reuters is referring to when they say that the best discussion is now in social media. And they are right.

There's no "laziness" here, because I'm yet to see even a hint that there is a solution to this problem, despite massive efforts. There's a fundamental conflict of interest. Consequently, commenting on "primary" news sites is uniformly atrocious.

Show me one news site with the reach of Reuters... no, that's hardly fair, show me one news site with a tenth the reach of Reuters that has anything resembling an edifying commentariat.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/13/shouts-and-murmurations/

The truth as I see it is that comments are only there because they're expected, while communities and discussion are no longer limited to the comment section, and in fact better communities and discussion are had nearly everywhere else. I don't think "everyone is talking about it on social media anyways" is a terrible excuse, in fact I don't think it's an excuse at all. It's a powerful and real reason not to provide an inferior parallel service.