You may have noticed that last week, CBC.ca quietly added two new features to their news stories: reader comments and recommendations.
Readers can now post comments at the end of every news story. In addition, every reader posting comments will get a personal profile page that displays all of the comments he or she has posted on our site.
When you read a story you like, you can now click a “Recommend” checkmark on that piece. This will help editors highlight the stories on our site that readers collectively find the most interesting.
Finally, the site now sports a wider, easier-to-read story page design. Coming soon: An improved CBCNews.ca front page that includes lists of the Most Recommended and Most Commented news stories.
What do you think of the improvements?
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What do I think? I think it’s about time!
I see that they are ‘vetted’ or edited. But there is no criteria, nor feedback when post is rejected.
Is it because CBC hates Radio Two recividists?
And can we have a spell check (for various composers, arttists, and Shelagh)
And social networks are so last year. I’d prefer the feedback from the government-mandated media monitors in the home–how many are listening to Ginastera, how many to Resphighi, to Burns and Leroy, etc.
If a million people comment on a story about “Intelligence” or “Disc Drive” will they be brought back under the Stursberg Rule?
No, no, no. Anyone who has looked through YouTube can tell you that the great majority of what gets posted in an internet comments box is usually rubbish. (yes, I know, ironic for me to say that here.)
Combine that YouTube-ian chaos with the kind of crowd seen in political blogs (aggressive left vs right arguing, flaming, etc) and you get what happens when news sites start dabbling in the new internet trends.
This blog, the moderated Your Take questions, and of course the columnists are good enough reader feedback/interaction for the CBC News. Please stay distinguished and don’t let your news site look like somebody’s blog. Legitimate news media has no need for Comments & Voting, Digg buttons, Post-to-Facebook links, hot tagging, and all that other "Web 2.0" bunk.
<i>Is it because CBC hates Radio Two recividists?</i>
One of the most commented-upon articles the day after it launched was actually about changes to Radio 2, so that’s not the case, no. If you take a look at that thread you’ll see that every coherently-made point makes it through, no matter how negative. Hopefully that addresses other commenters’ worries about the system being swamped with "me too"s and "first post"s.
The point about clearly defining moderation criteria is a good one though, that should definitely be looked at.
I see that they are ‘vetted’ or edited. But there is no criteria, nor feedback when post is rejected.
Comments are not being edited in any way. They are, however, being screened to make sure they comply with the Submission Policy (human readable version coming soon
which is linked directly below the ‘post’ button.
Unfortunately, due to volume, we can’t reply to every rejected comment. However, if you think a comment has been unfairly rejected, please contact us and we will investigate.
Wow! Loving the new comment, recommend, and blog-friendly features. CBC rocks!
I hope the comments don’t get out of hand - so far the comments seem intelligent. I hope the CBC plans on using some system (user moderation of some kind) to keep the flame wars to a minimum. The globeandmail .com has had comments for a while now, but they are rendered useless by partisan ranting.
(As an aside, is anyone else having trouble logging in to the sso service to post comments?)
If you’re having trouble logging in, let us know via the contact address Sharon’s linked to above, and we’ll get right on fixing it.
Everything is pre-moderated at the moment for objectionable content, but not for bias in one direction or another. I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but if it does happen, that in itself is news (cf. the Facebook wishes thing from a while back).
I wanted to leave a comment about a news story, but it wouldn’t let me log in! Will this be fixed?
I went to http://www.cbc.ca/contact/ to try to write about my logging in problems….but then I got an error message when I submitted the contact form!
Kev- everything is working fine for me now.
I really like being able to track all the comments a user has posted. It adds a bit of accountability. For example, I can see that this guy: http://membercentre.cbc.ca/ViewMember.aspx?u=8037425 is consistently anti-Islamic. If only I could block his comments from showing up on my screen, now that would be a great feature.
Chip - what browser (and what version) were you using to submit the contact form?
I think it’s a good thing that you’ve developed these methods of communicating with you. But when you close comments on a subject with a note like "UPDATE: At 200+ comments, I think we’ve gotten a fair sampling of public opinion here, so comments are now closed." it just smaks of an indifferent and uncaring attitude. Seriously.
Of course, assuming that those of us who use Social Media are your new target group and are therefore not interested in such things as classical music is probably more of a mistake than not having a blog at all.
Hi Ben,
Actually the problem is more technical than social. 200 comments makes a veeeeery long web pages and starts to break some people’s browsers.
Hey Tod,
Thanks for responding. You know though, you could break the posts into groups of 100 or so, giving folks the ability to surf through the comments without breaking browsers. Just a thought. I know that there are people who are not happy that the comments have been closed.
Maybe they should consider an actual forum (phpbb for example) to deal with volume issues then. It’s not very good if you are invited to express your opinion, then get a note saying we have a good enough sample.
Hi Tod;
Ben C’s point is a great one. You’ve asked for comments and, once given them on a highly touchy and contentious issue, used a technical excuse to stop any further commenting on it.
"UPDATE: At 200+ comments, I think we’ve gotten a fair sampling of public opinion here, so comments are now closed."
‘I think we’ve got a fair sampling’ - if your comments are meant to simply be a sampling, then say so. Say up front that the Canadian public can only act as a polling-sample to what the CBC actually wants to do regardless.
It’s this determination by the Corporation of what Canadians want that frankly makes me continuously want to find my news, entertainment, and any other relevant Canadian information via other sources. I for one really wished to make a comment about the upcoming changes at Radio 2 and now have no means to do so on this website.
If you want comments, and decide to do something contentious, have the resources to actually MANAGE the feedback rather than simply being lazy and cutting off comments because of ‘VEEEEEEERY long web pages’. Get some code to manage the comments, and the pages. Easy enough done.
@ben: I’ve been looking around for some kind of plug-in that will do that and play nice with the heavily customized install of Wordpress we’re using here.
@jeremy: It’s a great idea and there are a number of boards like that out there already.
@matt: Yeah, my wording could have been better. I do wish there were more resources available for moderating the blog, but there just isn’t and that ain’t up to me.
So after dozens and dozens of people post essentially the same comment, I think readers have a good sense of the mood of public opinion. Besides, if you want your comments to count and actually be read by those in senior management, you need to post your thoughts at http://www.cbc.ca/contact/
Your comments then get to Audience Relations. Every week, Audience Relations compiles a summary of feedback it has received and distributes that to senior managers.
It is THAT weekly report that the bosses look at. I’d venture a guess than half of them have only visited the blog a handful of times.
Audience Relations doesn’t take blog comments into account in this report, so posting on the CBC blog won’t have the effect for which you’re aiming.
Hey Tod, Thanks for responding and paying attention to what’s going on here.
I have to say that I’m disappointed that although "Readers can now post comments at the end of every news story. In addition, every reader posting comments will get a personal profile page that displays all of the comments he or she has posted on our site." no one at CBC is actually reading the comments, nor paying any attention to what gets said here.
What’s the point of having ‘Social Media’ and a blog in particular if no one’s going to be bothered to pay attention to it?
Time limits on posts etc is a cop out to keep people from having a say… but, if no one’s reading it, it really doesn’t matter, does it?
They could be spending more time here, I just don’t know. Although I’ve encouraged them all to do so, only a few (Kirstin, notably) have waded into the fray.
I do know, though, that that audience relations weekly report is seen by people in charge, and Audience Relations compiles comments it receives only through the form. (I presume, because then an email address is attached to it and they get a more accurate read on how many "real" people are responding?)
Comments are still open on the Radio 2 story here.
I don’t know for sure who at CBC is or isn’t keeping tabs on it, but it was a pretty big deal that in the first few days after the new commenting functionality was launched on the news stories, this was the story that generated the most comments.
Todd:
I really don’t see how a 200 comments limit could be a technical issue. Comments are paginated. Per page comments are limited to 5. Perhaps it could be raised to 10 to reduce the number of page links. But since each comment set is pulled in via AJAX, there really is no performance issue.
–Alan
Tod, thanks for listening to us!
I for one appreciate that at least at this level there are people at the CBC who are listening to us! Although you may not be able to save the cassical programming at the CBC for us, you’ve at least changed the way the blog works, /and/ you’ve let us know up front of those changes.
Thanks for all your hard work!
(I’m still broken hearted about the loss of classical music on CBC Radio 2)