A little more on comments

My post yesterday on the comments on our Dean Smith story triggered an irony alert: I had to delete a couple comments in a post about the high quality of comments. (Just FYI, if you start comparing people to Hitler, your comment is not long for this world.)

While we're on the topic, here's two other things you should read:

The Buffalo News is doing away with anonymous comments. As you might imagine, there are a lot of comments about that.

And Gene Weingarten likens comments on some stories to a sirloin steak with a side of maggots. Although I suspect Gene would admit that some news stories resemble Salisbury steak instead. And I've written a couple of things more like that protein loaf they serve in prison.

Gene does say he generally likes comments. I do too. But we can, and ought to, make them better. Thanks for the ideas so far.

UPDATE: NYU's Jay Rosen tweets (@jayrosen_nyu) in response to the Buffalo News story: "Just so typical of newspaper thinking that the middle way—persistent identity using a pen name-is removed from the debate."

I think Rosen is talking about getting rid of the ability to post as Anonymous, but letting people post under an assumed name. This is how the Observer does it on our regular stories online, but not on blog posts, which run on different software. Do you think assumed names work?

Dean Smith, comments, and you

On Saturday we published a story on Dean Smith that I'd been working on for a while with Robbi Pickeral, the great UNC basketball beat writer for the Raleigh News & Observer. Now that the story has been out in the world for a couple of days, the most gratifying thing about it is something I had nothing to do with: the quality of the online comments.

As I write this, there are 66 comments about the story on the Observer's page, and all but a couple are respectful, thoughtful and touching. Several Duke fans have written in to say that, even though UNC is their biggest rival, they still admired the way Smith coached and leads his life.

Comments often add a lot to the understanding of a story -- they can flesh out details in stories, pick out flaws, start debates, and even break news. Sometimes the comments are better than the story (and that includes a good number of my stories). I don't mind that it sometimes feels more like a saloon than a salon. The best answer to free speech is more free speech.

Having said all that, sometimes it's depressing to see how the comments turn out. Complicated thoughts can get reduced to political talking points. Vulnerable people can get pounded by personal attacks. A small group of posters can dominate the discussion, and drive out people who want to have a conversation instead of a shouting match.

The comments on the N&O's site about the Dean Smith story have more of an edge to them, although they're still mild compared to a lot of other stories we publish.

I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on how to make our comments better -- or your thoughts on why you like them the way they are.

And we really appreciate all of you who wrote in about this story. The comments really added to the discussion, and that's always our goal.