A few Comments on Commenting

Imagine you're hosting the perfect party. You'vespent days planning the food and drink. Your home has never looked better, andthe lighting and music are just right. Best of all, you have a great mix ofguests. You know that they hold a wide variety of opinions, and from time totime the discussions grow heated, but everyone seems to be getting along, or atthe very least, agreeing to disagree. You know your party is a success when theguests tell you they not only enjoyed the finger food, but the stimulatingconversations.

At CBC News, we try to host that perfectparty every day on our Comments forums. We have the largest commentingcommunity of any news provider in Canada, and receive more than 300,000comments every month. When there's a big news story happening, we can get morethan 1,000 comments an hour.

That isn't to say all of those commentsappear on our website. We believe in free speech, but we also want our forumsto be places where thoughtful people can have a good conversation. So we havesome groundrules that help us walk that tightrope. In short, we ask those who areposting comments to be respectful and courteous to each other, as if they were guestsat that party. We're constantly reviewing those guidelines, and last year wetook a harder line on personal attacks than we had in the past. Again, we don'twant to go overboard in censoring, but we don't want to publish a comment thatwould lead to someone getting a drink thrown in their face if they'd said it tosomeone else in person.

That said, between 75 and 80 per cent ofthe comments we receive are posted, but not before going through moderation. Weset the guidelines, but in light of the volume, we have contracted themoderation to ICUC Moderation Services, an internationally recognized companythat specializes in such work. There are numerous benefits to this, includingincreased staff flexibility to handle spikes in comments, more cost-effective24-hour coverage, and industry expertise. Their pre-moderation is pretty quick. Anycomment that meets our guidelines is usually posted within 15-30 minutes,unless there's an avalanche of comments to assess. And our contractor doesn'thave the final word. If we get complaints, or we notice ourselves that aconversation is turning nasty, we'll remove comments after they've been posted.

Not all of our stories are open forcommenting. If a story involves something that's before the courts, or willlikely end up there (especially if there's a publication ban in effect), welikely won't allow any comments. There are other highly-charged stories thatwill likely generate more heat than light, and we'll take the same approach. But as you can see on our site, we do allow our community members toweigh in on the important issues of the day. For example, we had a longdiscussion about Idle No More, an issue that generated a great deal ofpolitically-charged comments. Eventually we decided that the merits of allowingCanadians to voice their opinions outweighed the additional resources requiredto moderate the discussion. The same held true with the recent death of Dr. HenryMorgantaler. Nearly half of the comments we received (from both sides of the divide)were rejected, but the rest were posted to reflect the tenor of the debate.

One of the great debates about onlinecommenting is whether "real" names have to be used, or whether pseudonyms areacceptable. There are those who believe that some comments would never besubmitted if the poster was forced to use his or her name, but we've seen verylittle difference in tone between comments made under pseudonyms, and thosethat are made via Facebook or other social media sites that requireidentification. And even on sites which require real names, people who are determined to circumvent the system can often find a way. While we do require all those who postcomments to register with us, we do allow the use of pseudonyms. There are allkinds of reasons why someone might not want to be identified by name. It couldbe the person is afraid of what an employer or client might think of what theysaid. Or it could be a whistleblower, or a member of a marginalized group, whowould be shy about going public in that way. In all situations, we think ourfairly stringent guidelines mentioned above, and our pre-moderation, preventanyone from engaging in the type of inflammatory talk you might have seen onother sites.

Although CBC News has been allowingcomments on its stories for some time now, we know we don't always have it right. Ourguidelines and practices are constantly evolving. As an example, while commentsare currently organized by default by popularity (the ones with the most "thumbs up" minus the"thumbs down" are currently at the top of the list, but we are consideringchanging that so they're listed in reverse chronological order.

Finally, while comments from CBC Community members don'thave to adhere to our Journalistic Standards and Practices, theystill improve our journalism. We often hear perspectives that our journalistsmight not have had time to pursue in their coverage, or might not have evenconsidered. This adds to the richness, and in some cases, the balance of ourcoverage. Frequently, our staff chooses the "best of the best" comments andcompiles them in blog posts, to make it easier for everyone to sift throughwhat could be hundreds of comments on a single story. So what's written "belowthe fold", to borrow an old newspaper term, is often just as enlightening asthe original story. Engaging Canadians in this way is core to our mission, andit's gratifying to us that so many take the time to share their views.