May 17th, 2010 
joel The city decided on a new logo and brand for Erie: The Flagship City. Nearly 1,000 people voted for the white Niagara on multi-colored blocks. But in our little poll on P&T the media experts here preferred the white Niagara on a blue oval.
In the past couple weeks we’ve had quite a few comments about comments, or the lack thereof, on the busiest media website in the market, GoErie.com. A few years ago, the website of the Erie Times-News newspaper linked to the topix.com site, but the toxic nature of that site caused the ETN to pull the plug and for whatever reason, they haven’t opened up the site again for comments.
Should GoErie.com leave well enough alone, or should they join the ranks of most major newspaper websites and allow moderated comments?
Should GoErie.com offer a comments section and would you responsibly participate in them?
- Yes: comments should be allowed on GoErie and I'd participate in a responsible manner (57%, 17 Votes)
- Yes: GoErie should allow comments, but I'm more a reader than writer (23%, 7 Votes)
- No: GoErie is fine right now without the comments (20%, 6 Votes)
Total Voters: 30
Loading ...
Posted in 
Tags: 
As a local blogger I have seen first hand what results if the comments are not moderated to maintain civility, as demonstrated by TOPIX. The kind of comments generated there reflect way too much personal attack and name-calling, which serve no purpose in discussing a subject. I would have to see for myself that guidelines were in place and enforced before I would ever comment on
GoErie.
They wouild need a staff (not just one person) to moderate it 24/7…that costs money…are they willing to spend it? Secondly it needs to be set up so that people cannot comment using a “handle.” It has to be a full name or at least a frst initial and full last name, along with a valid e-mail. That is the only way there will be any hope for constructive debate…as opposed to mindless venting which serves no purpose whatsoever. Topix was a complete fail.
I allow comments on all my sites and my youtube videos, but with moderation. Nothing is automatically posted without me looking at it. Granted, I get very few comments so it’s not hard to manage.
Jim, I think one person could do all the moderation, since they could set up to hold all comments until approved.
What they should focus on first is an overhaul of the entire site.
It is set up only as a revenue generator. Navigating around to try and find anything of substance is highly unwieldy and monumentally irritating.
Fix that, then we’ll talk about comments.
Besides being a reader, I am an advertiser. Comments make good business sense. They bring people back and they give pages ‘stickiness’.
I was ( still am) upset when they pulled them down & someone lied to my face saying they were just reworking the comment system. I told them I’d buy goerie.com when comments came back. I love saying that when I see my rep ” How’s the comment system coming?”
I think a big reason they dropped comments is they lose editorial control. When people can refute stories right away on the same page the paper loses control & they don’t like it. They’d rather lose millions of page views and the accompanying ad revenue than let the public criticize their reporting.
Why “Comments” are a low, low, priority to the Erie Times-News:
(Hint—think monopoly and read this)
http://www.foliomag.com/2010/cutthroat-competition-breaking-monopoly
“stangetz” comment above qualifies for Comment of the Week” here. His posit is on target.
“Born On This Day:” is always on the Editorial page of the ETN, at the bottom of the Ed Mead and “We” post. Then you see birthdays.
I bring this up as a grand experiment for anyone to attempt. Navigate the entire GoErie Cyber-waste-of-Ink, and find the Birthdays.
They are in there. I assure you.
You will not find them. I assure you.
Navigate away!
Referring above to ETN online listing of birthdays for local folks born-on-this-day, Danny Lucas writes “You will not find them. I assure you.”
As Ed Matthews Mead would say, “we decided to give it a try”.
(1) Go to goerie.com homepage.
(2) Enter “birthdays” in search box and click search button.
(3) Third item down under “Recent News”: ‘Born on this date: May 21′
(4) Click on the link, and you are there.
Total time — less than 10 seconds.
(5) Even quicker, just click on “Lifestyle” in masthead. Scroll down to (wait for it) “Birthdays” heading on left side of webpage, and select the day you want to view. The past 4 days are waiting there for your mouseclick.
Total time — less than 5 seconds.
What’s your point ?
You proved the point I was making Erie BlogWatch.
I found “Birthdays” the same way you did, albeit I looked at more logical places. But your location under “Lifestyles” as easiest way to enter Birthdays is your LAST point, meaning you tried all the other ways first….and failed.
In the paper at ETN, “Birthdays” are on the Editorial Pages base. No one would look at Editorials, or any drop down box for Birthdays, except locals who see it there every day in the paper. But a look at Ed Mead’s column in editorials will show NO Birthdays below…as in the paper.
Further, why the search at all?
Good navigation lets folks find whatever they want pronto. But even the glorious, talented, ambitious to follow–any comment I make— the Honorable Erie BlogWatch, had to delve into “Search” on Homepage”…..thinking that would do the trick.
Logically it should. But as your blog morphed into illogic, so too, do your directions above.
Your step down under “Recent News” is NOT what you say, for news changes continuously. Indeed third item down, currently, is about the Post Office Closing story,
not Birthdays. And will change as soon as I post to more recent data.
So your advice to go this route (obviously tried, and gleaned by you) would yield as much productivity as the vitriolic BlogWatch Blog….never itself Blog Watched, btw.
Your step 3 yields this massive mess to choose from:
http://goerie.planetdiscover.com/sp?skin=&aff=1100&keywords=birthdays
Under this “Search for Birthdays”, WE get the following choices:
1)Paid Archived News (11,355)–not a good choice
2)Local Search (626) — another road to birthdays before you find God only knows what. (think about it…you did a search, and it takes you to Local Search! What is that?).
3)Recent News (80)
Erie BlogWatch’ suggestion….obsolete the moment it was written, and replaced by “recent news”. (and a weird choice to make for Birthdays…by any navigator on the Internet).
4)Obituaries (19) — say, you can find THESE in a drop Down box and navigate to them easily.
So the ETN “search” for Birthdays takes you to Obits from search on HomePage. It takes you to Category 4 to explore more.
This is followed by (0) entries under ALL of the next Categories:
Classifieds
Business Listings
Photos
Events
Cars
Coupons
Jobs
Blogs
ALL have (0) per ETN at 8:00 am Saturday May 22.
Either those categories have no entries, or Birthdays is not in the topic….so why take me there under a search for Birthdays? I suspect Erie BlogWatch is fudging on the time he took to find and navigate….omitting the steps everyone else has to take to even find the topic, even with a search engine.
I once “searched” for Bryan Oberle” at CyberInk, to review an article he wrote in predominantly Catholic Erie, PA. It was called Why the Catholic Church Doesn’t Get It. His points were salient and I wanted to reread them.
The search engine replied to my query for Bryan Oberle:
“Do You mean Bryan Arboyle?”
He was an employee, family member, writer, profiteer at ETN, and their own engine did not know where to find him.
I suggested they look in the Men’s Room and see if he was there. I also said if I wanted “Bryan Arboyle”, I would search for “Bryan Arboyle”. What dorks.
And none of these categories with (0) is Birthdays…you know, the original search?????
A Search shoud take you to where you request, not a smorgasboard of mismatched messes to guess.
In Erie, Birthdays are an Editorial Page posting….all my life. Should I look at editorial Page drop downs to seek them?
How about Vital Statistics?
Erie Blog Watch…not in Erie at all, goes straight to search instead of Vital Statistics (as out-of-town folks would presume), to read BIRTHS, Marriages, Divorce, Bankruptcy.
Dead gets its own spot on Obits.
But being BORN, is Vital Statistic; having a Birthday is not.
And you must have the luck of the Irish to have chosen Lifestyles. Normal folks would blink that on the Homepage and find 15 topics to choose from and pick one.
In the drop down for Lifestyle…..BIRTHDAYS does not exist.
You must take another step and actually enter Lifestyles, and take a chance within THAT area.
Even you admitted to scrolling down to find it at the base.
Others would not enter Lifestyles to even look, for the Homepage Drop Down has NO listing of Birthdays within the 15 categories of choice.
You searched harder than you admit!
But wait! It gets richer.
Within Lifestyles on Home Page drop down choices, we DO see “Celebrations”
(sounds like a good match to choose from all the choices in all the drop downs in all the Home Page categories).
Whatever you do, don’t look for Birthdays under Celebrations, in the famed Lifestyles.
You will find Weddings, Engagements, Anniversaries, but no listing of Birthdays under “Celebrations”
—a category in Lifestyles drop down
—a DROP navigation tool to take you where you want, when you want.
However, to become a Celebration called “Birthday”, on a different page at CyberInk….
then this is the page you go to SUBMIT your BIRTH!
You also ‘Submit Your Wedding, Anniversary, Engagement’ at this spot, as well as birthday, and they appear on the page you submit an anniversary or whatever.
Curiously, on the page you submit a birth, under Celebrations, in LIFESTLES, there are no Birthdays.
I note that stangetz makes the precise argument that I do. Stangetz says:
“Navigating around to try and find anything of substance is highly unwieldy and monumentally irritating.
But Erie BlogWatch makes no reference to to stan, only Dan….and EVERY time, at every place I comment.
Erie BlogWatch (formerly Erie Blog Watch), you have watched our Blogs in Erie from afar, correcting minutia and being slammed off the Internet as a Blogger.
Should you not rephrase yourself (anon, as usual) and become Erie CommentWatch, or more precisely DannyLucasCommentWatch?
It is curious that you find no problem with stangetz take, but like the Teacher’s Pet in Elementary Gradeschool, wave your hand saying everywhere:
“I know! I KNOW! Call ME!”
Or, you could truthfully name yourself Pinnochio.
Your posit that navigating CyberInk is a breeze is absurd, and you, stangetz, and I, and all Erie ETN readers know it
Danny, check out the ETN electronic edition:
http://www.etnextras.com/eedition/
“The Electronic Edition of the Erie Times-News **looks just like the printed newspaper** [emphasis added] because it’s the newspaper with interactive and searchable articles from all your favorite sections, plus photos, columnists, graphics and ads.”
Jim Griffey is correct. It would take a significant staff to moderate all comments. It was already done with Topix.
Erie Moderators for comments on Topix-Erie included Kristin Lynch, Dennis Weed, and Doug Boldt, if memory serves.
I particularly enjoyed Boldt, who was queried about a bank robbery by a typical Topix commentor. Boldt had made a comment and was challenged as to how he “knew” the facts about this robbery.
He was in effect being called a liar.
Boldt responded with admirable restraint:
“My wife was the bank teller involved”. (paraphrased).
So, three monitors produced Topix as we knew it.
Bye to comments even WITH moderation.
Clearly, it would take MORE than three folks.
A link I gave above shows the ferocity of monopoly in town. It shows savage underhandedness in capitalism as we thought we knew it, for there is no capitalism in Erie, press or tower.
They control what can be entered into your mind.
Indeed, the fear of blogs is someone else telling you “other versions” of truth, for you to weigh in on.
Almost all political stories locally, are done by an ETN blogger!
Notice how little folks know and understand about candidates each year?
Heavy D is a reader and advertiser.
We have discussed Comments, a Poll on them, and Heavy D and I have exchanged words on comments at ETN in this forum previously, when he opined that it never dawned on him (then) that ETN big-wig lied to him.
http://www.pressandtower.com/2009/04/paycuts-price-increases-arrive-at-the-times-news/comment-page-1/#comment-6243
[My analysis precedes his comment back then]
(That whole discussion a year ago was the same as today; No Comment Allowed from the Public.
Letters to the Editor (as rewritten by ETN, or sanctioned holy writers who are always posted…Corbin Fowler, Johnson, Rios, whatever,) are Permitted
But Erie BlogWatch throws in the PAID E edition with all the bells and whistles and ads and each page “as is” daily. Of course, EBW adds nothing to the evidence that Comments exist in the paid version (I dunno).
(And the video for E – edition was NOT closed captioned)
But if I was an advertiser with ETN, and CyberInk is owned by them and regurgitates ETN verbatim daily, then I would seriously challenge this monopoly company and say “WHY aren’t you running my ads in ETN, GoErie, and the Eedition simultaneously?”
It must be possible to run all the ads online, since Erie BlogWatch said it is done.
And, I would stop running my ads until they did place them wherever possible.
Or, you could place your ads with Rena Tran in the above link, as she gains steam on competing with a monopoly.
Ironically, Heavy D had it from the horse’s mouth as early as April 29, 2009 that Comments were coming back at ETN. Uh, they lied.
Given all this, I have to say I have dropped reading many venues for the comments they allow. It seems a few people in every region see the online newspaper as their personal territory to pee all over and mark.
I was an original and permanent subscriber to USA Today.
Their graphics were second to none.
But when I see an article of great interest online, followed by 5,000 to 10,000 comments, and many of those are spam — same comment over and over in a cut and paste over time—I quit reading USA Today.
In the hearing world, folks seem civil to talk to.
I am deaf. My world is visual, and written word, and if lucky, Closed Captioned (very rare, you will find when you’re deaf).
So I read comments voraciously as this is communication to me. But, the level of writing, I do not mean incivility here, I mean the basics of conveying a thought, or being remotely related to the article, or comprehending what you have read, all seem to have gone awry when everyone was handed a QWERTY board to type, as opposed to professional journalists jotting information.
This dumbing down and complementary focus on entertainment as news, coupled with instantaneous lifestyle across the board, seems to have had a very negative intrusion to intelligence in writing.
Few, few comments are worth reading anymore.
The major spots, like WSJ, are requiring use of full name and email (not posted) to comment.
I stopped my subscription to the WSJ, and limit reading it online, since even with full, real names, the same folks over and over lambast the opposing folks over and over. We are polarized in thought, and fractured at expressing a comment worth reading.
Maybe Comment Writing needs taught as a full subject in schools, akin to Language, Spelling, Grammar, Conveying Concepts. There are precious few good writer’s doing commentary in response to an article. anywhere. anytime.