The Salisbury Post has joined the growing number of newspapers and blogs requiring online readers to use Facebook to comment on stories.
We’ve been moving in this direction for several months, opting for Facebook comments on stories or topics that tended to draw the greatest invective. Though other stories remained open for anyone to comment on, commenting traffic declined.
The final straw came earlier this week when we looked at the IP addresses of our remaining commenters. The majority of comments were coming from a few IP addresses that each used multiple identities on our site.
One user created a new identity virtually every day.
This was skewing reader reaction. A person with 12 different identities on the Post’s site could create what appeared to be a firestorm of reaction to a story when he or she in fact was the only commenter, or one of only a few.
Most of the comments were anonymous.
Facebook requires a name.
According to Jeff Sonderman at The Poynter Institute, using Facebook has had a positive effect on online dialogue.
“News organizations that have turned to Facebook to power their website comments say they are seeing a higher quality of discussion and a significant increase in referral traffic,” Sonderman wrote last year.
Sonderman is the Digital Media Fellow at The Poynter Institute, specializing in strategies for social media and online platforms.
The Post had resisted going all-Facebook on comments for several reasons. Some readers don’t use Facebook, and there are instances in which anonymity allows people to share important information.
But the negatives outweighed those positives. Allowing a free and open exchange is difficult amid personal attacks, profanities and deliberate piling on. Acting as referee to those exchanges was a time-consuming job requiring repeated judgment calls — often prompting protests from anonymous commenters.
Facebook commenting will not eliminate all the challenges of conducting civil online debate, but it’s a good start.
Let us know what you think.
— Elizabeth Cook
Editor
704-797-4244
ecook@salisburypost.com