Don't Read the Comments?
April 12, 2016 7:51 AM   Subscribe

The Guardian Investigates What Goes On "Below the Line" Comments allow readers to respond to an article instantly, asking questions, pointing out errors, giving new leads. At their best, comment threads are thoughtful, enlightening, funny: online communities where readers interact with journalists and others in ways that enrich the Guardian’s journalism. But at their worst, they are something else entirely.

New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.

Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.
posted by modernnomad (55 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
First
posted by fungible at 8:01 AM on April 12, 2016 [23 favorites]


I don't know if there is a newspaper site comment section equivalent to Godwin, but in the US it would need to include anyone who blames whatever the article is about on Illegal Immigrants, and/or Obama.
posted by Badgermann at 8:03 AM on April 12, 2016


It doesn't solve the problem and definitely ignores it, but I don't read comments threads on anything more. It is very true that when a comments thread is a delight, it is rare and awesome, but for my mental health, I just can't anymore. It sucks because it limits my participation in a lot of online places, but I recoil inwardly like a puppy about to be kicked when I post somewhere new to be active. As a woman, you wait for that other shoe to drop all the time.
posted by Kitteh at 8:07 AM on April 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


I'd be really curious to find out what would happen if the readers/commenters were blinded to the gender of the author, either by removing that information or by randomly assigning fake authors to the articles. Do commenters respond to the gender of the author, or to something in how authors of different genders write? (I suspect it's the former, given the specificity of the comments, but confirmation would be great.)
posted by schnellp at 8:07 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


or to something in how authors of different genders write?

Yeah, it's those hearts dotting i's that really ticks commenters off.
posted by kmz at 8:12 AM on April 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


I am shocked, SHOCKED... no wait
posted by billiebee at 8:14 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


How newspapers botched online comments still baffles me. It's as though they decided that they'd offer unrestricted access to make up for not printing every single piece of "letter to the editor" correspondence they'd received, no matter how badly written or thought-out they were. (Then again, if they had, they would have hired away Jessamyn, Cortex, et al. long ago to run their comments section.)

Good for the Guardian for at least taking a close look under that slimy rock. Maybe the NY Times, Washington Post, etc. can take a long hard look at what they're tacitly approving for publication under their banner instead of just waving algorithms at them to keep the trolls away.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:17 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Do commenters respond to the gender of the author, or to something in how authors of different genders write? (I suspect it's the former, given the specificity of the comments, but confirmation would be great.)

And you'd be wrong. If a man and woman published the exact same article, I can 100% guarantee you the man wouldn't be questioned as much, wouldn't be assumed to know less, and the responses wouldn't carry the same level of vitriol. He also wouldn't be getting called names as bad or as much as the woman, to say nothing of ones that carry gender-specific connotations or threats of sexual violence.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:18 AM on April 12, 2016 [16 favorites]


On the one hand, this is the most predictable result imaginable. On the other hand, sometimes it's nice to have something quantifiable to point to.
posted by jeather at 8:19 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]



Do commenters respond to the gender of the author, or to something in how authors of different genders write? (I suspect it's the former, given the specificity of the comments, but confirmation would be great.)

And you'd be wrong. If a man and woman published the exact same article, I can 100% guarantee you the man wouldn't be questioned as much, wouldn't be assumed to know less, and the responses wouldn't carry the same level of vitriol. He also wouldn't be getting called names as bad or as much as the woman, to say nothing of ones that carry gender-specific connotations or threats of sexual violence.


I think we're in agreement—commenters are responding to the gender of the author (the former), not to what they write (the latter).
posted by schnellp at 8:23 AM on April 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


I am not sucking up to the home team when I say that if I ran a major web site that was having issues with comments, I would pay MetaFilter to allow my people to intern on their mod team for six months as training for how to do moderation right.

We are very lucky here, gang.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:26 AM on April 12, 2016 [20 favorites]


The Guardian has a rosier outlook on the value of comments on newspaper articles than I do. Maybe their specific readership is exceptional and more motivated than most to post comments that add value? For newspaper articles overall, I rarely see any insightful comments, let alone threads which are "a joy to read."

I mostly see people commenting to: complain about the subject of the article being [foo] rather than [bar], add one- or two- word dribblings that are basically noise, or leap straight to racist or sexist stereotypes and then defend them to the death. Occasionally someone just restates some portion of the article with which they agree. That's about it.
posted by desuetude at 8:29 AM on April 12, 2016


I think we're in agreement—commenters are responding to the gender of the author (the former), not to what they write (the latter).

Apologies, I think I mixed the order up.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:29 AM on April 12, 2016


I've noticed that I can't see Guardian comments on my mobile anymore. Did they change something? I like reading the comments on Martin Rowson cartoons so I can figure out what is going on!
posted by My Dad at 8:36 AM on April 12, 2016


Apologies, I think I mixed the order up.

No worries. I have this image of my head of an experiment article that displays a different author name at random, and comparing the resulting comment sections. I'm sure it'd be a really stark contrast and a striking illustration of the bias.
posted by schnellp at 8:37 AM on April 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


On selective comment sections: "The Guardian has already taken the decision to cut down the number of places where comments are open on stories relating to a few particularly contentious subjects, such as migration and race. This allows moderators to keep a closer watch on conversations that we know are more likely to attract abuse."

I didn't realize that. Is the full list of comment-suspended topics available?
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:38 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I wish every site could be moderated like The Toast, but it takes a toll on the moderators and it wouldn't scale to places like the NYT or WashPo. Plus I'm sure there'd be people complaining about the rules being too draconian.
posted by kmz at 8:40 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


MonkeyToes - From the text you quote, it doesn't sound like they're suspending all comments for particular topics, but rather being selective about how many and which areas allow for those comments (so that those areas can be monitored).

(Haven't read the article yet.)
posted by amtho at 8:41 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apologies, I think I mixed the order up.

I could swear it said "latter" too, which was the reason for my flippant comment. (I'm guessing the edit window is the true culprit here?) Apologies from me as well.
posted by kmz at 8:41 AM on April 12, 2016


but in the US it would need to include anyone who blames whatever the article is about on Illegal Immigrants, and/or Obama.

Comment sections are where Obama is an Illegal Immigrant.
posted by srboisvert at 8:42 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


How newspapers botched online comments still baffles me.

How could they not have? Let every bored, angry, frustrated, delusional monkey with a keyboard act out their fantasies in your comment box and it was always already going to be a shitshow. If we've learned anything from the internet by now it's that A) a YUUUGE lot of people have nothing to say and they do that badly and B) a device that stiches everyone's Id together is going to have consequences. It's like one of those old sci fi stories where everyone gets telepathy and it's hell. Aside from page hits, I've never understood why newspapers in particular even bothered with comments. If I wanted to know what the man-on-the-street had to say about some event, I'd walk outside and ask him.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:46 AM on April 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


Plus I'm sure there'd be people complaining about the rules being too draconian.

Curiously draconian comes from Draco, the first recorded legislator of Athens who introduced written court enforced rules in 7th Century BC. So when people complain about things being too draconian they are really arguing for informal law and blood feuds. So pretty much the Internet.
posted by srboisvert at 8:46 AM on April 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


Aside from page hits, I've never understood why newspapers in particular even bothered with comments.

Near as I can tell, this is the only reason they do comments. More page views as each troll refreshes their browser up for the fight with the other trolls.
posted by terrapin at 8:52 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


This article is important. There's solid data and analysis here. It's easy to roll our eyes and say "of course Internet comments suck". But examine the irony of saying that here, in a Metafilter comment.

The Guardian takes a more principled approach to their comments section than almost any news site I know. I admire their effort to make comments more useful and to take responsibility to stop the assholes. It's expensive to employ moderators, I wonder if they've calculated the return on investment.
posted by Nelson at 9:03 AM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Does anybody read the comments down here?
posted by wabbittwax at 9:05 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


How newspapers botched online comments still baffles me.

There isn't the same sort of editorial control over what gets published to social media -- it's usually handled by the tech department or by the promotion or outreach or whatever they call it department. And it's just one of their tasks. So they simply publish the story to Facebook and let the comments roll as they will. They often don't have the time, resources, experience, or even permission to moderate comments, and the newspaper itself as an organization tends to see all reactions as "engagement," defining all engagement as good, because it means people are talking about their stories!

There needs to be a sea change in publishing. Newspapers have got to start seeing social media as a publishing platform, instead of a promotional platform, and take seriously the fact that they have functionally created an unmoderated hate forum that they directly benefit from. But that would mean moving social media under the purview of editorial, developing guidelines, and hiring staff to moderate, and so they don't, even when they know they should, because the enjoy the benefits and don't actually want to be responsible for the time and cost it would take to do it properly.
posted by maxsparber at 9:11 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


How newspapers botched online comments still baffles me.

There is no money to be made in doing it well. There IS money to be made in doing it poorly (or was). But this is where I confess I have not yet RTFA.
posted by jessamyn at 9:13 AM on April 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Comments sections were better under FDR - when the only way you could comment was to pick up a piece of paper and a pencil and write to the editor and voice your opinion days and weeks later. Ease of commenting and the lack of a time commitment and cost (stamp) give throw-away comments the same value as well thought out responses. The problem of course then becomes multiple throw-away comments can be completed in the time it takes for a thoughtful comment - so the signal to noise ratio strongly favors the noise.

There is something to be said for Redit's Karma system, but that relies on the user base being able to parse the meaning of a comment quickly and assign it a proper value. The problem arises when once again short witty or quippy comments can float to the top because they cost the reader less time to digest and process. Once again, this means that we favor short content instead of a longer prose format.

Then you get to just pure moderation and $5 paywalls... which is complete bullshit wonderful.

[Comment edited for content] - Cortex ;-) (jk)
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:14 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Having been involved in commercial online publishing since the mid-80s, including spells moderating Compuserve, AOL and MSN forums for print publications before the Web ate everything, the publication's motivation for reader contributions can vary tremendously.

Sometimes, you really do want to create a community around a brand, because there are lots of potentially good things that happen both editorially and commercially, and sometimes you just want the hits. I think in general, the reasons for doing this track the commercial model of the publication; subscription-only and premium verticals have strong motivations to cultivate readership participation, and often have the resources to help that happen. Hitmongers gonna hitmonger; while it's absolutely an old newspaper tradition to annoy readers from time to time, you can't manage outrage nearly as well online but it does bring in the clicks.

Unfortunately, they're not good clicks - advertisers will never do well from trolls, and they drive everyone else away. They can poison a brand, and if you're not really good at shutting them down they can run away with a place really quickly.

You've got to have strong filters if you want to get a net benefit from comments, and those are going to take some editorial resource and reduce metrics. Both these things are hard to sell to management, and even if you've got support they're hard to balance and hard to demonstrate as benefits.

The usual result is a poisonous swamp. But you get evolution, even in sewers, even if it takes generations of painful, smelly death to get there...
posted by Devonian at 9:16 AM on April 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


As of a moment ago, according to the note at the end of the article:

"Since 7am this morning, people have left 40,983 comments on the Guardian. About 733 were blocked by our moderators."
posted by Mister Bijou at 9:27 AM on April 12, 2016


Now:

"Since 7am this morning, people have left 41,055 comments on the Guardian. About 733 were blocked by our moderators."
posted by Mister Bijou at 9:29 AM on April 12, 2016


I get: "Since 7am this morning, people have left 13,331 comments on the Guardian. About 238 were blocked by our moderators." Weird.
posted by jeather at 9:40 AM on April 12, 2016


As a researcher of online harassment, I'm excited that the Guardian has become the first platform to publish an analysis of data on harassment across their platform. There's a lot of room for improvement, and I hope they continue to be transparent about their efforts to make change. BUt it's a huge step.

To learn more, check out our resource guide to research about online harassment.
posted by honest knave at 9:51 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


The interactive examples! Were awesome! I wish Metafilter had something like that.
posted by amtho at 9:55 AM on April 12, 2016


I don't know if there is a newspaper site comment section equivalent to Godwin, but in the US it would need to include anyone who blames whatever the article is about on Illegal Immigrants, and/or Obama.

They'd also argue that your list of causes is redundant.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:56 AM on April 12, 2016


...with the explanations, of course. "We blocked this comment for this reason" "We allowed this comment for that reason."

Due notice would have be included that it's ultimately up to the person (moderator) doing a weird difficult job.
posted by amtho at 9:57 AM on April 12, 2016


"Since 7am this morning, people have left 41,055 comments on the Guardian. About 733 were blocked by our moderators."
posted by Mister Bijou at 12:29 PM on April 12 [+] [!]


I get: "Since 7am this morning, people have left 13,331 comments on the Guardian. About 238 were blocked by our moderators." Weird.
posted by jeather at 12:40 PM on April 12 [+] [!]


I'll go for large bodies of water for $400, Alex.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:57 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Oh, well, that makes sense, sort of. (I assumed they meant 7 am local time, and would never guess that that sort of line was geolocated.)
posted by jeather at 10:04 AM on April 12, 2016


I would have guessed that one of you is looking at a copy of the page cached by Akamai, or something like that.
posted by uosuaq at 10:37 AM on April 12, 2016


advertisers will never do well from trolls, and they drive everyone else away.

Is this true? Recently The Guardian announced it was not opening comments (as a general rule) on articles about refugees and Islam, but quickly backtracked because the only way their site is making even a pittance is through growth numbers on page views. I think advertisers are pretty keen to reach middle aged white guys who believe Europe is about to be destroyed by people who don't share our values yada yada yada.
posted by colie at 10:45 AM on April 12, 2016


Color me shocked that an immediate response is "maybe-maybe-maybe-it-was-some-other-variable!" It's always some other variable, somehow. Never race or gender.

Curiously draconian comes from Draco, the first recorded legislator of Athens who introduced written court enforced rules in 7th Century BC. So when people complain about things being too draconian they are really arguing for informal law and blood feuds.

Well, Draco was known for making death available as a penalty for many crimes, including (possibly; it's controversial) mere adultery if the two were caught in the act. So that's what people referring to.
posted by praemunire at 10:48 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Aside from page hits, I've never understood why newspapers in particular even bothered with comments.

When I wrote for a major metropolitan daily and came in for hundreds of derisive comments with every article, I mentioned to my editor that I'd be happy to interact in the comments once they were moderated. She just laughed and said that the reason I was doing so well on site traffic reports was because the comments weren't moderated and thus traffic thrived for those posts. My post traffic literally had nothing to do with the quality of my writing and everything to do with how much vitriol people could aim at me.

Also worth noting: I once did a point-counterpoint op-ed with a (male) friend and colleague, and it was syndicated nationwide. Guess which one of us got hate mail in the actual post, complete with threats on "if I can find your street address, imagine what else I can do?" All because one of us had the nerve to express a positive opinion on the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

If you are a woman with a byline, you publish with the knowledge that you are going to get rations of shit that your male colleagues will not -- and you are lucky if your workplace doesn't encourage this for pageviews.
posted by sobell at 10:53 AM on April 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


I scored a 7/8 on that quiz. Maybe I've missed out on a career as a delete-happy internet moderator!
posted by brundlefly at 10:53 AM on April 12, 2016


My post traffic literally had nothing to do with the quality of my writing and everything to do with how much vitriol people

Welcome to journalism
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 4:06 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


I also love the comments moderation at The Toast, and somehow managed to read The Toast regularly for MONTHS while just assuming the entire commentariat was lovely and fun and wow what a refreshing lack of spam or trolls, maybe the trolls just haven't found it yet, or maybe I guess that automatic new accounts moderation really works.

This is, of course, entirely wrong and now I know The Toast's great comment section is the result of hardcore but invisible work by the editors and moderators. I find the unapologetic, mostly invisible draconian moderation to be frankly delightful. Obviously it's not for every community, but I think it's working especially well for The Toast since their policy appears to have been implemented right from the start, and the occasional screenshot of deleted comments reminds the community of what they're thankfully avoiding while denying trolls the engagement they crave. Nicole Cliffe called one example of it "next level Thoughtcrime moderation" and I approve of it. There's something to be said for "because I said so," moderation on smaller websites where there is not, in fact, any obligation on the part of the editors to entertain all comers.
posted by yasaman at 7:25 PM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]




I've seen two new moderation choices in the Guardian in the last few days. One was a note that said comments on that article were pre-moderated. The other was on today's article Is it too late to stop the trolls trampling over our entire political discourse?: this morning, it said something like "Comments will open on this article at 1 pm and the author will be here to take part in discussion" and now at 1.50 there are 507 comments showing. That looks to me like a good choice for a particularly contentious article. I'm curious as to when they will close the discussion.
posted by Azara at 5:54 AM on April 13, 2016


Color me shocked that an immediate response is "maybe-maybe-maybe-it-was-some-other-variable!" It's always some other variable, somehow. Never race or gender.

Of course the way to rule this out is for the guardian to go a few months with no by-lines whatsoever.

Which, come to think of it, might not be the worst thing in the world as an ongoing thing. It was SOP back in the day. Journalists were less vain, I suppose.

But that's another line of inquiry.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:58 AM on April 13, 2016


Is it vain to want credit for your work? Is a credit vs vitriol trade-off fair?
posted by billiebee at 6:06 AM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Bylines are also have an ethics function - the writer is identified and therefore responsible for the words written.
posted by tommyD at 9:49 AM on April 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


And it's a balance right? Like there's been a lot of science done on the fact that, in the absence of signifiers a lot of people presume that "anonymous" people online are male. So this is basically telling PoC and women that they need to act like men to not get harassed. I mean, I know this is not what anyone is literally saying, but there's some fictional belief that there's some gender-neutral persona that people can adopt when that's literally not the case at all. If you present with no personal info and a set of initials, people will presume you are male (or a woman trying to hide the fact that she is a woman, like we did back in the phone book days because our mothers warned us about using our full names). And as soon as you start talking about any of your lived experience, which is often a useful or necessary part of being an essayist, the cat is out of the bag anyhow.
posted by jessamyn at 11:08 AM on April 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


The worst is the double deal of the overlap between female name + article about feminism. Case in point, target number one, Jessica Valenti, she is the most trolled for sure on the Guardian, it’s ridiculous, there isn’t literally a single piece she can post without getting some instant reaction along the lines of "oh, Valenti, of course, what did you expect" and that’s the comments that do not get deleted, because you get to see those every time - at least usually those that do add something more specific instead of just being only "ah fuck off Valenti" basically - but in her case it’s definitely both the name and the topic. And of course, you couldn’t picture a Jesse Valenti write those columns anyway, they do include first-hand experience a lot of the time, so it’s difficult to imagine how the trolls would troll less if it wasn’t a woman’s name in the byline.

All in all, though, I think it’s great that even in a piece specifically focused on the trolls they do acknowledge that’s still a minority, and that a majority of comments do indeed contribute something and many are thoughtful and some outright wonderful (and some very funny, and a joy to read indeed). It’s true, I do find there are still a lot of worthy contributions by readers there. I’m getting tired of hearing how the trolls are ruining the internet because that’s not true and it’s another way of letting them win.

I like a lot what Nesrine Malik says in the interview clips, she has some great observations about moderation as a necessary evil, and it’s also refreshing to see a bit of general self-criticism about how online media work, wanting more views and clicks and stirring debate, especially at that level and with those numbers.
posted by bitteschoen at 1:48 PM on April 13, 2016




Jessica Valenti: "When the Guardian examined the 1.4 million comments that have been blocked by moderators since 1999, they found that eight of the 10 writers receiving the most blocked comments were women, and topping the list was … well, me. Sure, there’s a small part of me that’s proud – I’m No 1! – but the bigger truth is that I’m mostly just exhausted."
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:00 PM on April 14, 2016


And this: "They called it 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator." "Good moderation isn’t about setting or controlling an agenda; it is about not letting anyone’s agenda ruin the conversation. ... There’s more to moderating than that, obviously – there is weeding out legally dicey statements, spam and inappropriate language, but that is straightforward by comparison. What is harder is understanding agendas and how they can wreck a conversation – how a comment dropped like a stone in a still pond can cause tiny ripples that change a thread."
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:52 AM on April 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


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