Priming: to prepare (someone) for a situation or task, typically by supplying them with relevant information You might’ve noticed that some blogs and news websites carry a little message that accompanies their comment forms. Underneath each story and above the text box in which you type your reply, it usually says something like “be fair, be reasonable, be a decent human being”. The idea being that a simple, friendly message might sometimes be enough to encourage readers to give up on caustic cynicism and rude remarks.
Change user behavior by changing how you invite those users to participate. I wonder — I’m not saying I know — whether we could scare away baddies and improve comments by kicking that technique up a notch.
If somebody dies and you publish an obit, wouldn’t it be reasonable to allow people to pay their respects, while noting to readers that this is probably not the right time to evaluate whether the deceased’ time on earth was well-spent?
If a story really has no use for random opinions, but could benefit from people sharing their own experiences, why don’t we ask people whether they have an experience they’d like to share, instead if asking them if they want to react?
If an investigative piece could use corroboration, why don’t we ask if readers wish to inform us of anything or if they have any pertinent links they would like to share, not whether they want to respond?
If a columnist publishes a beautiful tranche de vie, is there really any point in having people interact with the author? Is not the only meaningful interaction, for a contemplative piece like that, for people to say whether they like it or not? If that’s so, why not replace the comment form with a simple “like”-button?
If a public thinker gives us a tough thesis to chew on, shouldn’t we ask people to mail back their thoughts or ripostes after mulling it over, instead of encouraging them to fire off a quick two-sentence reply?
Priming readers for certain kinds of contributions is not about trying to own the conversation. You never do. People can always vent their thoughts through Facebook and Twitter. It would be about encouraging people to have the kind of conversations actually worth having.
Different kinds of content require different kinds of responses. And responses come in a cornucopia of flavors:
- corrections
- appreciation
- additional information: an expert view or external links
- responses to the author, rather than public comments
- experiences from readers’ lives
- opinions
- discussion among readers
Add your own.
Some types of responses even ask for different interfaces.
We could encourage people to contribute information or sources they’ve found, by making it easy to add a link, Facebook-style.
Corrections could use their own Wikipedia-like discussion pages, so accusations and inaccuracies can be treated with the gravitas they deserve, while not disturbing the lively on-topic discussion going on.
Currently, when newspaper websites ask readers to share their thoughts, the very language and user interface biases responses towards opinions and (smart-alecky) corrections. That’s okay, but we also need more people sharing their own experiences, their expert views, that one obscure but incredibly relevant web page on the topic at hand. We’re not getting enough of those re.
Isn’t that just bad interaction design?
4 comments
And if you can tell us how to entice knowledgeable experts to comment while putting off the mouth-foaming herd, you will have saved the internet. :)
Indeed, those responsible for the reader feedback should not be called moderators, and feel they might be censoring if they remove a comment. A better title could be an editor: just like for the "real" news, you make sure the interesting stuff floats to the top, so readers don't have to wade through hundreds of comments if they want to know what's going on. Just as you have different editing tools for selecting and shaping the news to present it to your readers, you have different tools for selecting and shaping the new information that readers can bring to the table.
You may wish to consider the possibility that in addition to priming or response-type-specific interfaces (which would intentionally limit the type of response collected for a particular story), news publishers could array a virtual constellation of various UCC response categories around the 'central' publisher-generated content. Readers could then choose which of the available response types they wished to contribute/browse/consume/explore. Some readers would choose the cheap entertainment of opinionated vitriol, while others would gravitate toward more substantial information fare. Subtle interface design could gently steer users in one direction rather than another.
@Jan: definitely, a featured comments system does improve the experience for casual readers. If you'd actually filter which comments get shown, prepare to have a rock-solid editorial policy on what gets through and what gets rejected, though, because there's a real possibility that it will upset people.
@lunghu: yes! At that point, however, the limiting factor becomes how intuitive you can design the whole thing to be.
If you'd apply the response types post-hoc as categories, you might be removing comments from their original context: an insightful response by an expert could have been prompted by vitriol from another commenter.
And it might be weird overhearing a conversation between users that goes "Have you read the comments to piece X?", "Eh, do you mean the commentary, the feedback or the additions?"
Anyway, there would be a ton of little details that need sorting out, both in IxD and how staff interacts with readers, but at least we'd be doing something to make things better instead of sticking to despondency in the face of trolls.