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SALT LAKE CITY -- With the long-term goal of improving community dialogue amongst its users, ksl.com has paused all activity on its comment boards.
As of Thursday, ksl.com has temporarily disabled the comment boards as it looks for alternative community forums.
In the interim, ksl.com and its parent company Deseret Digital Media (DDM) will gather and analyze feedback from its users as it aims to provide more civil community discourse. [CLICK HERE to take a survey about the comment boards]
In a statement to ksl.com users DDM says: "We believe that public forums come with the responsibility both on the part of the media company and the users. Over the past year, ksl.com has invested significant resources toward improving the level of dialogue on our comment boards. Unfortunately, a small but active minority of our users repeatedly abuse this privilege by posting comments that are inflammatory and disrespectful of others."
Some of those improvements included user ratings and profiles, community policing tools and partial editorial moderation.
"While we have observed some improvements to the tone of the discussions, we have not reached the point where we are meeting the expectations of our users or our own journalistic standards," explains Brett Atkinson, general manager of ksl.com.
Atkinson says comment boards could be relaunched in the future, but no timetable has been set and any revamped system will include removing anonymity, expanded moderation and prioritizing relevant comments.
"We want it to be a rich and lively debate. We would just hope that people would come with well-informed posts that they are making, and in a civil manner and respectful of one another," said Atkinson.
This isn't just a ksl.com issue. Media organizations across the country, such as the New York Times, Washington Post and others are looking at ways of maintaining online civility.
Robert Gehl, assistant professor at the University of Utah Department of Communications, calls it high-tech "growing pains."
"I'm wondering if the culture hasn't caught up to the space," he said. "In other words, we're so used to consuming mass media, maybe we don't have the language to speak back and speak civilly."
Meanwhile, DeseretNews.com, another DDM property, will continue to maintain its fully-moderated comment boards. However, it will make some significant improvements including enhanced moderation standards that filter out comments with personal attacks, violent or hate-filled remarks, epithets and racial stereotypes, and irrelevance with respect to the commented story.
"Less than 1 percent of our visitors contribute and read comments. At ksl.com, the percentage is even less than that," explains Chris Lee, general manager for DeseretNews.com. "We believe that many more of our users would like to participate if we offered a civil and respectful environment for dialogue."
Also, the comment boards have moved off the DeseretNews.com story pages, allowing only those who choose to participate to view the comments.
"When you post stories about a sensitive issue and have commenters derailing that conversation," Lee said, "it changes the trust factor for consumers."
"As a company, we uphold and value integrity, civility, morality and respect for all people," the statement to ksl.com users reads. "We believe that it is possible to have an open discussion in which all viewpoints may be articulated in a respectful manner."
That point is reiterated by Clark Gilbert, president and CEO of Deseret Digital Media and Deseret News.
"Our Deseret Digital Media properties continue to learn from our readers, and we take seriously our responsibility to provide a platform of respect and civility in dialogue."
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E-mail: kmccord@ksl.com
