FrontBurner comments

The Nightly Build

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No One Was Ever Civil On FrontBurner

This week, FrontBurner decided to turn off commenting (for now). Everybody, it seems, now is talking about the comments sections of blogs and online news articles. Even FrontBurner itself seems to have referenced its new no-comments policy in every other blog post since. Ironically, today Wick Allison himself links to an article on The Atlantic about the price of oil and the recession, saying "in this case, the comments are worth reading." (I'd link to the FrontBurner blog post itself but I'd have to go to FrontBurner to get the link, which I don't do anymore because I read the articles on my RSS reader. I only went to FrontBurner itself for the comments.)

People are not just talking about commenting. Some people are doing something about it. At least two sites have sprung up volunteering to be the home of FrontBurner comments (LodoWick and Trey Garrison).

Why this spontaneous show of support for what Gordon Keith calls sniping, snarking, and snarling pettily at each other? (By the way, Gordon Keith himself is not one of those supporters, which I'll get to later.) Bethany Anderson gives the best reasons why FrontBurner's decision was the wrong one.

"Don't discount the power those comments had. They corrected instantly when erroneous information got out. They gave you instant feedback. And, more importantly, they gave you a relationship with your readers."

That's lost to FrontBurner now. But, apparently, even Bethany Anderson can stand only so much commenting. Yesterday, she said "OK, OK, Enough Already".

"So really, enough with the 'Frontburner sucks.' No, it actually didn't suck. It was quite fun there for a while."

Umm... I think what people are saying is that FrontBurner sucks *now*. (OK, maybe some people recognized FrontBurner as being sucky all along, but they are not the ones we're talking about here.) There's irony in Bethany Anderson commenting about FrontBurner's no-comments policy and then commenting about other readers commenting, saying that other readers should quit commenting. That makes me dizzy so I'll stop there.

Gordon Keith turns the tables completely and says FrontBurner doesn't suck, we all suck. Talking about comments on The Dallas Morning News, he says:

"If you read the comments after an article or blog post, you know what I am talking about. It devolves so quickly you wish your ancestors had remained monkeys - at least the shit-slinging back then was more honest. You walk away asking 'wow, are people really this mean and petty?' Yes, they are."

This from a man who admits he works on a "vulgar medium," talk radio. But he says he is "being PAID to do it" which, through some unexplained mechanism, justifies his being vulgar. (Isn't being paid to do something vulgar pretty much the epitome of vulgar?) Like many of FrontBurner's own blog items, the value in Gordon Keith's blog item is found not in the original piece, but in the comments. Reader "Craig" lays out the alternatives:

1. No moderation/editing
2. Moderated comments
3. No comments

With the first you get "hooting and hollering like the baboon enclosure at feeding time." With the second, you get "allegations of censorship." With the third, you lose a "sense of community." That's all the choices there are. Take your pick. There's no perfect solution.

My preference? Option 1, until traffic reaches a level that separating the wheat from the chaff becomes impossible. Then Option 2, with a light hand on the censor's pen. I can't ever see a situation that calls for Option 3, the nuclear option. It's the publishing world's equivalent of mutual assured destruction -- sure, you can kill all the evil commenters, but you'll be killed in retaliation by your customers going elsewhere to find community.

At heart, FrontBurner understands this, which is why Wick Allison promised to turn commenting back on when they get around to implementing an acceptable means of moderation. The lag time it takes them to roll this out this will be an indication whether they have what it takes to survive the 21st century publishing business or whether they are a doomed, relic print publishing company that only dabbles in online.

P.S. Perhaps I should add that one reason the Ed Cognoski blog exists is because I got tired of having my comments deleted by a heavy censor's hand at Dallas Blog. Here I can say what I want. Readers can read what I write or not, as they choose, not as the censor chooses. Not coincidentally, I seldom read Dallas Blog any more. Win-win for both of us, I'm sure.