News

Friday, December 11, 2009 3:42 PM EST

Forums: Start your own discussion threads

As some readers already know, we launched some investment-related forums recently at The Globe (which I wrote about in a recent post) as a way of giving readers another place to discuss the economy, the dollar, the investment markets in general, etc., without having to do it in the comments section of specific news stories.

When we initially launched them, the decision was made that only Globe staff would be able to create new discussion threads, because there was a concern about unpleasant or obnoxious (or possibly legally dangerous) topics being created by malicious users, and the moderation burden that would put on the newsroom.

I'm pleased to say that we have reconsidered that decision as a result of reader feedback, and have now opened up the forums so that readers can create their own discussion topics. Of course, those new discussions and any comments contained within them will be subject to our Community Guidelines as well as our general terms and conditions (we are now using ICUC Moderation Services in Winnipeg to help us with the moderation of forums and story comments).

As always, please let me know either here or at mingram@globeandmail.com if you have any concerns or comments about forums or any other aspect of our community features.

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Friday, November 20, 2009 5:41 PM EST

A new community feature: forums

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that we're experimenting with a new community feature at GlobeInvestor: discussion forums. If you've participated in discussion groups and forums at other sites, ours will be very familiar to you -- there are several forums, each with one or two discussion topics or "threads," and readers can post responses, etc.

In addition to being able to comment or reply to a post in the usual way, you can also flag forum posts as abusive, just the same way you can with our story comments. And there is one additional feature that readers don't have with comments on our stories: in the forums, you can click and "ignore" a specific commenter, which means that their comments will be hidden from you on all future discussion threads.

For a number of reasons (moderation resources being one of them) we decided to start with three broad categories of discussion: the economy, the dollar and the markets in general. We will be adding new discussion threads periodically, but at least for the time being we will be creating those threads ourselves, rather than letting readers create their own.

Feel free to use the "About These Forums" topic to suggest forum discussions you would like us to set up. We will also be monitoring the various forums to see where the discussion is going, and if there seems to be overwhelming support for a specific topic we will likely set up specific threads for those.

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Thursday, November 19, 2009 4:48 PM EST

When comment moderation goes too far

Update:

Kurt Greenbaum has apologized for overreacting in his original response to this incident, although he doesn’t explicitly say that he is sorry for calling the school and indirectly causing someone to lose their job.

As someone whose job involves thinking about our social-media policies and our approach to comment behaviour, I'm always looking at what other newspapers and media outlets are doing, and today I came across a case that crossed a line -- for me, at least -- in terms of how to deal with problem commenters. It involved a vulgar comment made by a user at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's website, and the response by the site's director of social media, Kurt Greenbaum.

According to Greenbaum's blog post (which was mirrored on his personal blog), someone posted a comment on a story in which they used a colloquial or slang term for female genitalia. It was deleted, but then was reposted. Greenbaum says he noticed that the comment alert from Wordpress showed that it came from a nearby school. So Greenbaum called the school, and they asked him to send them the email with the comment, which he apparently did. About six hours later, he says, the school called and said that an employee had been confronted and that he had resigned.

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks that doing this goes way beyond the normal course of editorial behaviour. I've been moderating blog comments and story comments for several years now, both as a blogger and as the Globe and Mail's social-media editor (or Communities Editor, as we call the job), and there is no way that I would contact someone's workplace about a comment unless they had done something extremely egregious, such as making death threats.

Just posting offensive comments shouldn't trigger that kind of extreme response, in my view -- even if the person posts them repeatedly. We've had hundreds or even thousands of such comments, most of which are much worse than the one Greenbaum is talking about, and I have never contacted someone's workplace, even when it was obvious that the person in question worked for the federal government. If someone does it repeatedly I (or another editor) usually contact them directly and ask them to stop, and if they don't then we move on to stronger responses.

I know I'm not the only one to see Greenbaum's behaviour as over-the-top, because a number of people agreed with me on Twitter when I asked the same question, and just as many or more took the social-media editor to task in the comments on his blog post. One commenter said:

"You guys don’t like moderating so you call his work and get him fired. Nice. Happy holidays."

to which Greenbaum replied:

"Yeah, you caught me! I made him log on to his computer at work, visit STLtoday.com’s Talk of the Day, read the item, type a vulgarity and hit the “submit” key. Interesting perspective. Thanks for your contribution."

Other readers said:

"What an abuse of power, Mr. Greenbaum!!! So is the Post Dispatch now a Gestapo Agent? What a sick and terrible thing you did to this employee in an economy where he probably doesn’t stand a chance in getting another job! I recommend that YOU get fired for abuse of power!!!!! See how YOU feel!!!"

and

"YOU are the director of social media? tools to be leveraged to get businesses closer to their customers? what an awful story and it’s even more embarassing that you squawk about it after the fact. the lesson is: be careful StlToday website visitors - never know when a bored employee will pursue some bizarre investigation that could cost you your job."

and Greenbaum replies:

"Defend the guy who posted the vulgarity all you want. I’m not regulating someone’s thought. He can think whatever he wants. I’m moderating our boards. Follow our guidelines and this won’t be a problem for any of you. Remember, I said it was a school, right? It could have been a student. I didn’t know who it was. I just thought the school might like to know about it. I sleep fine at night."

What do you think of what Greenbaum did in this case? Did he overstep his bounds as the moderator of the St. Louis Today site, or do you think he was justified in what he did? Let me know in the comments.

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Monday, November 30, 2009 2:47 PM EST

Our community guidelines

As anyone who has commented on a Globe and Mail story probably knows, we have a policy on what kinds of comments are appropriate and which ones are removed, but I confess that we haven't always done a great job of communicating that policy clearly and consistently to our readers -- in part because our policy has been evolving, and continues to do so (which I would argue is a good thing).

So why and how are comments on Globe stories taken down? Why doesn't the Globe require commenters to use their real names? Why do some comments simply disappear, while others are replaced by a message that says they weren't "consistent with our guidelines?" Do Globe reporters ever respond to comments, and under what conditions?

These are the kinds of questions that our Community Guidelines FAQ was developed to answer. It also deals with how we approach other forms of community engagement, including live discussions (which we do using software from Toronto's Cover It Live) and forums, which we are in the process of rolling out on our Globe Investor site, and hopefully elsewhere.

In coming up with our policies, we have looked at the way many other media outlets handle comments and community -- including sites such as The Guardian (whose policies are here), the CBC and the New York Times -- as well as non-media communities like Metafilter and Slashdot. Like all of those sites, we want to allow our readers to comment on issues they feel strongly about, but at the same time we want to maintain a civil tone that encourages dialogue instead of partisan attacks.

We are probably never going to achieve that balance completely, or to everyone's satisfaction. But we are trying hard to do so, because we know that many of you look to the Globe as a place where you can discuss important topics, and we want to encourage others to do so.

The FAQ is a work in progress, so please let me know what you think, either by posting a comment here or by reaching me at @mathewi on Twitter or via email at mingram@globeandmail.com.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009 5:54 PM EDT

The story behind a deleted post

In a post written earlier today on our books blog, In Other Words, online books editor Peter Scowen expressed some strong opinions about an internal Globe and Mail workshop we held a few days ago that looked at the issue of "search engine optimization" or SEO. We removed Peter's post, but I want to be clear about why we did that, in part to address some comments that have been made about its disappearance.

There's no question that the impact of search-engine optimization on journalism and media in general is the subject of heated debate -- and even outside the media sphere there is plenty of debate about the topic, as anyone who has read the recent blog posts on it by Danny Sullivan and Derek Powazek can attest. There are no doubt plenty of people both inside and outside the Globe who agree with much of what Peter said in his post.

So why did we remove it? The simple answer is that the Books blog isn't really the place for a debate on the merits of SEO and how it affects the job of Globe editors and headline writers, as Peter himself has acknowledged. We encourage debate about those issues, and SEO is a subject we are all trying to come to grips with, as every other online media entity no doubt is (or should be). But the Books blog wasn't the right forum for that conversation.

I asked Kenny Yum, editor of globeandmail.com, for his thoughts about what happened, and he agreed with what I've described above. He also added this comment:

”It’s important for us to be transparent to you, our readers -- it’s what makes this medium so engaging and new for us. And as newsrooms adapt in an era when we're talking about search engine optimization and other best practices that help us better serve you, we expect and encourage debate about what this means for our craft. The Globe in that way is no different than other newspapers and media outlets. We are striving to be better even if that means that we understand the modern means of distribution and the way readers interact with us. We also invite debate to happen inside and outside the newsroom."

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Thursday, June 18, 2009 11:01 AM EDT

Comments and voting: We need your input

As some of you may have noticed -- and as I wrote in a recent blog post -- we recently launched some new comment and community-related features at the Globe (there are more to come, by the way, along with some improvements that many of you requested, such as the ability to sort comments, see them all on one page, etc.).

Among other things, you can now vote for comments that you agree with, or give the "thumbs down" to comments that you dislike. Unlike the ability to comment or create a user profile, which are available only to registered users, anyone can click and vote on a comment without having to log in. That's what I wanted to talk about.

There was a considerable amount of debate about this feature when we were planning these changes. Some of our team argued that voting -- like commenting itself -- should be restricted to registered users only, while others felt that we should open the voting system up to as broad a group as possible, in order to get a representative view of what readers think. In the end, we decided to leave the voting feature open to anonymous or un-registered users.

There is a downside to that decision, however, and we have started to see some indications of it on some of our political stories, including a recent one about Prime Minister Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff discussing a political arrangement. As several commenters on that story noted, someone (or a group of someones) appears to have hijacked the comment voting system at some point. Although it's not clear whether they were doing it manually or electronically, some comments were getting as many as 300 thumbs-up or thumbs-down votes in a matter of minutes.

One obvious way to prevent this kind of thing -- or at least to make it less likely -- is to change the way the system works, so that only registered users can vote on comments. Other sites such as Digg and Slashdot take this approach. Personally, I would much rather leave the voting feature open, because I think many readers will be irritated by having to log in before they can click a thumbs up or thumbs down button, and because in general I like our site to be as open and inclusive as possible.

The alternative argument is that allowing only registered users to vote would cut down on the kind of hijacking we're starting to see, and would help to improve the quality of the votes and make them more representative of our core users (at least the ones who have registered). In addition, it might create an incentive for people to sign up and get access to all of the other great features that registered users get.

So my question is this: What should we do? Should we leave the voting the way it is, or restrict it to registered users only? You can post a comment here, email me at mingram@globeandmail.com, or send me your thoughts on Twitter at @mathewi.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009 1:02 PM EDT

Live discussion: New community features

As many of our readers have probably noticed by now, we've made a number of changes to the way we handle comments and other community-related features at the Globe with our redesign and site re-launch. I've discussed some of the changes -- and the improvements that are coming soon -- in an earlier blog post, but I thought I would host a live discussion to see if anyone wants to talk about why we made some of these changes, what the philosophy is behind them, and how we plan to roll out our larger community vision.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 7:56 PM EDT

We've got new community features

Updated:

As many of you have already noticed, we recently launched a fairly major redesign of the Globe's website. Thanks in advance for putting up with some of the bugs and missing pieces -- we are working hard on stamping them out and/or putting the pieces back in place.

When it comes to our story comments, for example, we realize that there are some issues people feel very strongly about (inserting paragraph breaks, sorting the comments by oldest first, improving the navigation, etc.) and we are busy adding those features right now.

We'll be adding some other enhancements as well over the coming days and weeks, including the ability to quote from a comment when you are replying to it, which we think will help you follow the conversation on a story. So please consider this as version 1.0 -- if not a beta -- and rest assured that updates are coming soon.

One of the biggest differences you've probably noticed is that you can now vote on comments, by giving them either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Soon, you will also be able to sort the comments so that you can see which ones got the most positive votes or the most negative votes (you'll be able to sort the comments the old-fashioned way too, in reverse chronological order, or see the newest first).

By encouraging you to vote on comments, we're asking you to help us determine which comments deserve to be highlighted and which deserve to be buried (you can also flag a comment as abusive, of course, as you could under our old system). We want you to play an even more active role in helping us to develop the kind of smart and opinionated -- but also considerate -- community that we think most of you want to take part in.

In addition to voting, we've also added user profile pages (mine is here). This gives you a place where you can tell us -- and other readers -- a little about yourself, and it's also a place were you (and other readers) can see the most recent comments you've made and how many votes they received.

If you enjoy someone's comments, you can go to their profile page and click the "add as friend" button, or post a public message on their profile page. Soon, we hope to be able to give you the ability to rate other readers, by giving them a certain number of stars, and readers whose comments are highly rated and whose profiles are highly rated will eventually be given additional features (such as the ability to upload a photo in place of the generic avatars we have now).

In a nutshell, the idea behind adding these features is to try and turn our comment sections into more of a community of readers -- or rather, to reflect the community that already exists there. Just as behaving in a certain way can enhance your reputation in a real community, we would like your online behaviour at globeandmail.com to contribute to your online reputation. We're hoping that by doing this, we can help improve the "signal-to-noise" ratio of our comments, which many of you have complained about over the years.

Over the next few weeks and months, we will be adding new community features as well, including forums and groups, which will allow you to have a focused discussion around a specific issue, rather than having to do that through comments on a particular news story. In some cases, we may close comments on a story but open a forum where readers can discuss a contentious issue in a more closely moderated environment.

All of these enhancements are designed to make The Globe and Mail's online community a vibrant and active place for discussion -- and even allow the creation of virtual friendships with other Globe readers -- while still maintaining the kind of high standards for debate that we'd like to think most of you associate with the Globe.

As always, if you have any comments or questions, please leave a comment here or email me at mingram@globeandmail.com, or you can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mathewi.

Update:

Just to respond to a few things people have mentioned in the comments: we are going to give you the ability to see all the comments on a single page, so you don't have to go through multiple pages, and we will be fixing the navigation so that you don't go back to the beginning when you vote and you go to the top of the page instead of the bottom if you do go back or forward using the pagination.

We're also going to be adding the ability to quote from another reader's comment when you are replying -- so that other readers will know what you are responding to.

As far as the grey avatars are concerned, one of the things we are considering as an incentive to commenters (to encourage them to provide thoughtful or well-considered comments) is that after receiving a certain number of votes, we might give them the ability to upload a custom photo as their avatar.

To answer at least one complaint, I am also working hard to convince our writers of the benefits of responding to comments, and interacting with readers. I can assure you that we don't see comments as simply a "ghetto that will drive page views." I will say that one of the easiest ways to convince writers that your comments are worth responding to is to say something intelligent (it doesn't necessarily have to be in agreement).

There are many other features we have planned or in the development stages, including the ability (which many of you have mentioned) to "ignore" or hide certain comments or commenters. We're also hoping to have a better mobile version of the site at some point, and to add functions that allow you to comment or vote from your handheld (BlackBerry or iPhone).

And finally, to respond to what seems to be the most common complaint, we are working on bringing back the "mouse over" summary of articles -- please bear with us :-)

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Friday, May 15, 2009 3:29 PM EDT

Tamil protests: Free speech or illegal outrage?

On Sunday night in Toronto, thousands of protesters who had gathered to demonstrate their opposition to the Sri Lankan government's attacks on members of the Tamil minority took over all six lanes of the Gardiner Expressway, the major southern route across the city, and closed it for several hours. Although the demonstrators eventually left peacefully, many Toronto residents complained about the protest, saying they supported the Tamil groups but drew the line at interrupting traffic on a major highway.

Close to 600 commenters posted their thoughts to our story on the protest, many of whom were outraged at what they saw as criminal behaviour by the protesters. Unfortunately, we had to close comments on the story because the volume of offensive and violent comments became too overwhelming for our staff to handle. So I decided to open a live -- and fully-moderated -- discussion on the issue here, using Cover It Live. Feel free to post your comments and thoughts on this issue, but be warned that ad hominem attacks and racist commentary will not be permitted.

Note:  This discussion is now over, but the archived version is still available for those who want to read it.  Thanks to everyone who took part; I apologize if I wasn't able to get to your questions or comments, but there were quite a lot.

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Friday, May 22, 2009 3:02 PM EDT

John Ibbitson's book has a wiki

Globe and Mail journalist and author John Ibbitson has written a new book called "Open & Shut: Why America has Barack Obama and Canada has Stephen Harper," a discussion of Canada and U.S. politics and government that was written in the style of pamphleteer in the early days of American politics — in other words, a stirring argument designed to provoke discussion of an issue. In this case, the issue is whether there is something (or possibly a series of things) that are fundamentally different about Canadian politics when compared to U.S. politics, that make it more likely a leader such as Barack Obama would be elected south of the border.

In order to propel this discussion and debate beyond the pages of his book (which was published May 5 by McLelland & Stewart) the Globe has set up a series of online forums using the Public Policy Wiki as a platform -- the wiki project that we launched earlier this year in partnership with the Dominion Institute, to get input from Canadians on policy issues such as the federal budget, Afghanistan, climate change and immigration. In a similar way, we've created several questions that focus the themes and issues in John's book, and the author selected several notable political observers to kick off the discussions around those questions.

The first topic question is: "Open and Shut argues that the American political system is more open to ideas and to outsiders, while in Canada, cloistered elites protect their power to manipulate Canada's political parties. What, if anything, can and should we do to make party leaders open up their leadership process to the rest of us?" Kicking off that particular topic -- entitled "Open America, Closed Canada" -- is John Duffy, a former advisor to Paul Martin and founder of StrategyCorp. He argues that the federal Liberal Party has deteriorated over the past few years, and says that "the nadir of this long-term deterioration of the leadership selection function was reached when the Liberal crown was awarded last fall de facto, without a Convention, a debate or even a single delegate-selection meeting in a riding."

The second question is: "Federal politicians, and federal public servants, seem increasingly remote and disconnected from the lives of Canadians. Open and Shut maintains that this is because the public service remains closed to outsiders, and because Ottawa has ceded so much power to the provinces. Do we want our federal government to matter more in our lives, and if so, what should we do to give it meaning?" Leading off that discussion -- called "Yes, Mr. President; No, Mr. Prime Minister" -- is David Eaves, a political writer and consultant who is a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy and blogs at www.eaves.ca. David argues that what we have in Canada is "a government that resembles a dense fog. Consequently, we shouldn't be surprised Canadians feel disconnected from their government… what is scarier is so do many public servants and politicians. In government information is power; it allows one to shape policy, inform ministers and advance or delay an agenda. Today, too many incentives promote secrecy."

The third question that emerges from Ibbitson's book is "Open and Shut argues that the solution to increasing American protectionism and mistrust over border security is for Canada to propose to the Americans a comprehensive, security, economic and environmental accord that will lead to much greater integration in all three areas. What do you think?" Kicking off this issue is Maryscott "Scotty" Greenwood, who served in the Clinton Administration as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa and is currently Managing Director at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP, a law and public policy firm based in Washington, D.C. She argues that "Canada should propose a bold new approach to comprehensive cooperation in the areas of security, the economy and the environment. If there is to be a grand new era in Canada-U.S. relations, the ideas will have to emanate from Canada. The U.S. is either unaware of the great benefits that could come from deeper integration with Canada, or is too pre-occupied to take the time to come up with creative solutions to make an already good bi-lateral relationship even better."

Each of these issues comes with its own forum, where readers can debate or post their own questions and responses, and those who are motivated to can create their own forum topics or even edit individual pages with the wiki tools. John will be responding in the forums, and will also be writing a blog within the wiki about the responses and input that come from readers both in the forums and elsewhere. Please stop by and tell us what you think.

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