'New York Times' Rolling Out Moderated Comments On Articles
The New York Times is now carefully allowing comments on some articles, not just blog posts. According to an in-house email from NYT.com general manager Vivian Schiller and deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman, "This week we rolled out some new technology for commentary on articles. It's more discriminating than the blog-comment platform and it gives readers more control. For instance, readers can recommend comments and view them in rank order starting with the ones with the most recommendations. Editors can choose an interesting selection for readers with time to read just a few.... You'll notice that we're only putting comments on a handful of articles at first. That's because we're still building our moderation force and the tools for automated moderation. There are some important features built into the system that you can't see and that we're not using yet. For example, producers and editors will be able to designate certain users as 'trusted,' potentially allowing some comments to bypass moderation. We're excited about the chance to experiment."