Irishtimes.com moderates its stance on comments

COMMENTS LEFT underneath articles on irishtimes.comwill no longer have to be pre-approved by moderators following a shift by The Irish Times Ltd to a system of post-moderation.

Under the new commenting platform, which is similar to the approach adopted by other media group websites, comments will automatically appear below articles. If a comment is flagged as inappropriate by registered users, it will be temporarily taken down and, once considered by an Irish Times moderator, either restored or permanently removed.

“The world has changed since newspapers first opened articles to comment in the 1990s. The anonymous bulletin board approach may have had some value in the past, but it is completely outdated in the age of Facebook and Twitter, where people are used to having conversations in real time,” says Hugh Linehan, online editor.

The delay between submitting a comment and waiting for it to appear has, to date, caused “very real frustration” on the part of regular commenters, he adds.

The previous system of pre-moderation also limited the number of articles that could be open to comment at any one time.

Initially, the new system will apply to articles that appear on the Opinion and Analysis page of the print edition as well as irishtimes.comblogs. However, it is anticipated that a greater number of articles from across the newspaper will be opened to comment in the future.

The other big change is that users will be required to have a social media login to leave comments.

“One of the attractions of social media logins is they tend to encourage people to use their real identities rather than a pseudonym. We are keen to encourage our users to put their names to their work, as our journalists do,” says Linehan, who believes it “elevates the level of discourse”.

There is also a legal basis for the shift to post-moderation, as some rulings have suggested that media groups are less likely to be held liable for libellous comments left by users if they do not actively approve the comments.