Over the years I've written quite a bit on the topic of the comments section on the Web. I often refer to this section located under Web articles as "The Wild Wild West." In fact, after my first article was published on The Huffington Post about five years ago I become inundated reading the many comments from around the world. Very few of these comments were on topic and most were, quite frankly, of an anti-Semitic nature.
I remember asking my colleague Rabbi David Wolpe, who had already written several articles for The Huffington Post, how he managed to read and respond to all these comments -- and whether he was alarmed by the hateful nature of so many of them. He responded to my inquiry with something to the effect of: Just write, don't bother with the comments.
The ability to post comments anonymously was often thought to be the problem that allowed trolls to comment off topic on articles posted on the Web and so many websites changed their policies forcing users to sign in before leaving comments. That solution only goes so far since users can create dummy accounts and many of these trolls don't care about masking their identities. Over the years, many websites have come up with solutions to the problem of what I call "garbage comments" (e.g., 9/11 conspiracy theory comments on a cute YouTube video of my kid playing guitar). These solutions include the ability for users from within the "community" to be able to vote up or down comments and also to report violations of the terms of service or commenting policy. This is a good start and I think all Web media sites should employ this strategy, allowing users whose comments typically receive up votes to filter to the top and banning users whose comments are often reported for abuse.
I remember asking my colleague Rabbi David Wolpe, who had already written several articles for The Huffington Post, how he managed to read and respond to all these comments -- and whether he was alarmed by the hateful nature of so many of them. He responded to my inquiry with something to the effect of: Just write, don't bother with the comments.
The ability to post comments anonymously was often thought to be the problem that allowed trolls to comment off topic on articles posted on the Web and so many websites changed their policies forcing users to sign in before leaving comments. That solution only goes so far since users can create dummy accounts and many of these trolls don't care about masking their identities. Over the years, many websites have come up with solutions to the problem of what I call "garbage comments" (e.g., 9/11 conspiracy theory comments on a cute YouTube video of my kid playing guitar). These solutions include the ability for users from within the "community" to be able to vote up or down comments and also to report violations of the terms of service or commenting policy. This is a good start and I think all Web media sites should employ this strategy, allowing users whose comments typically receive up votes to filter to the top and banning users whose comments are often reported for abuse.
