Am I the only one who has trouble with the way Civil Beat is handling comments?
Comment/discussion on articles was supposed to be a big draw, all of us with different viewpoints staying civil, not protected by anonymity, etc.
But let me get this straight. Today’s lead headline is a story about the governor’s rejection of an offer from HSTA to go to mediation and binding arbitration.
At the end of the story are links to related articles, then: “DISCUSSION: Share your thoughts on the governor’s response.”
But the link isn’t to comments on this story or the governor’s response, but rather to a general discussion of “teacher compensation,” where almost all comments are from June and July. I’m guessing this is an attempt to force us to the “big picture” issues, but I don’t think it works.
It seems to me that the whole idea of vigorous discussion moderated by “reporter-hosts” has failed, in part because it is too fragmented (some comments on facebook, some in “discussions”), on the one hand, but also mushed together (comments are various specific stories mixed together under broad discussion headings).
Maybe I’m missing something, as a relatively new CB subscriber and reader. And maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. But it was one of the major selling points when CB was launched.
I would be interested in how other CB readers handle this aspect of the site.
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Just the fact that the discussion about the CB commenting system is going on here and not there should tell Mr. Temple something.
As noted above, not everyone wants to use Facebook due to privacy concerns. For some it’s a simple matter of preference, but for others the consequences of the lack of privacy are more dire. Ever hear of cyberstalkers? They’re all over the place. And with Hawaii’s small town atmosphere where everyone knows everyone else, the last thing I need is some nutjob I disagreed with on a political story showing up at my door.
There are other ways to assure civil discussion online, such as a clear moderation policy that is consistently applied. Something the Star-Advertiser and its predecessors never had, and the lack of which turned their comment sections into an embarrassment of Hawaii. Instead of doing the logical thing they chose instead to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is what CB seems intent on doing also.
I like CB. A lot. But I am wholly turned off by the Facebook requirement. In addition, I find the website to be awkward and clunky. I hope CB lives up to its potential and its promise.
As CB becomes more popular (hopefully), will it be realistic to expect that its reporters will have the time to moderate discussions and respond to statements?
I too like CB. I like that I can now look at least once a day at the story I simply must read. I don’t feel that with the SA. And SA doesn’t use Disqus anymore so the comments have really gone down.
I hope CB can fix it to allow commenting on the stories themselves instead of in the discussion areas where it loses its relevancy. Then it would spark some real debates and more readership.
Soooo, getting rid of facebook should be the next step, John, it’s not working.
Yes, the Facebook thing is annoying. But it’s a start-up experiment that’s easily fixed. The bigger problem is you can’t really take Civil Beat seriously until it adopts a business model that isn’t based on donations from a single angel investor.
The new half-off subscription “promotion” is a step in the right direction. (Watch, it’ll be like the Bush tax cuts and never go away.)
A paywall makes sense for the Star-Advertiser, which has a money-making print product to protect. Why should it allow free website access to cut into its paid print-subscriber number? Not the case for CB.
The hope for CB now should be that its new lower subscriber rates will push it toward the model it should have adopted at the outset: totally free reader access and paid advertising. That would create more community impact through wider readership, and in the process create a wider audience attractive to advertisers.
But with the (understandable) arrogant certainty of a successful entrepreneur who remembers a good call he once made — no paid advertising on eBay — Omidyar apparently thinks the no-ad policy should apply here as well.
Compare Civil Beat with Hawaii Reporter (forget her politics) over the past year. Doesn’t it look like one is treading water and the other showing robust growth? The difference is in the business model.
Hey Ian~
Maybe you should charge for holding these “focus groups”! Great feedback – the kind of valuable stuff smart companies appreciate receiving.
I’ve complained about CB disjointed discussion format since day one. There is no logic to dumping comments from several different stories into the same catch-all discussion section. It’s totally disjointed and impossible to follow the logic or connections between respondents. I’m not the only one who pointed out that this won’t work, but they’ve managed to ignore everyone and stick to their unworkable format.
i like CB. keep up the good work and thanks for asking the hard questions that other media in the town seem to ignore. dig as deep as you can. more appreciate it then you may know. the SA has lost all authority for me as any type of objective news source. what they DON’T report is usually more interesting than what they DO report. go figure…
I hope John Temple doesn’t view the piling on as anything other than what it is: a plea to reorient his site toward success. It doesn’t make sense to create barriers to enjoyment.
I hope he’ll also reevaluate the price of admission. Viewing the site from the nether end of the pay wall, I’m still not persuaded it’s a good buy. He needs to draw us in with articles that make us to say, “Aha, so that is what is going on!” The recent article on Senator Akaka “carrying on” fails to ask a single hard question about the stalled bill that bears his name.
The site needs advertising: a second revenue stream would do wonders for his bottom line, as Dave Pellegrin has pointed out. Temple should think about an alliance/merger with HW, which has loads of experience selling ads.
Not least, he might consider renaming the site: from Civil to Civic Beat. Discussing public affairs, which can have wide-ranging consequences, for good or ill, may require more than an occasionally raised voice. In public debate, being civil can be defeatist. If his writers feel they are right, and have the research to back them up, they should argue to win.