It shouldn't be hard for the Star to explain to readers what they are doing. (I know: I shut down the comments section on this blog one time -- during a spam attack... I explained the reason to readers so they knew what was going on.) The Star gives the impression they are censoring.And given the fact that The Star was given a "Maggie" Award from Planned Parenthood in 2006, the Star's decision to shut down comments looks suspicious. What's up, Star?
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14 comments:
Gary Pruitt is a tool!
They use an outside service for commenting (Pluck). Plus they recently went through some server problems and made some changes.
Did you try commenting on another story? Usually when they turn off commenting, you won't even see the comment section.
Everything else was working. The blogs were working, Pluck was working fine. This had to be deliberate. Don't know if they shut off commentary from the start, or if they pulled the plug and dumped everyone's response. There were no comments below the editorial and typically this story has generated 6-8 pages of comments.
Just checked again and all commenting is now down under the stories. Didn't check the blogs. That did not seem to be the case last night.
What's interesting is that if it was a major feature of their website has been off the hook for at least 9 hours and still hasn't been fixed.
Maybe the same people who are in charge of building maintenance are also in charge of fixing the web site.
The Star shuts down comments that run contrary to their desired outcome on a regular basis. They did this even before the new comment section was installed.
When they do it, they just remove all comments from a given story.
7:59, that is a ridiculous statement, and anyone who follows comments regularly knows it is ridiculous.
Actually, it's not ridiculous. One strategy is to run an early version of a story to take all of the heat and then once everyone has vented their spleen they up date the story slightly and dump the old one. If you look really hard, the other one is still to be found, but not easily.
12:34 PM They do it all the time and they have done it for a couple of years. The really good stories that they know will catch hell, they simply don't allow comments at all.
1:50's statement about not allowing comments on some stories is also correct. Often AP and stories cut and paste from other papers receive this treatment.
LOL, I can't believe they would attempt to tell people they don't spike the comments after the Rhonda Lokeman story.
Fortunately they couldn't put a lid on James Hart.
///Fortunately they couldn't put a lid on James Hart.///
This comment proves how ridiculous this whole argument is. Couldn't put a lid on James Hart? He's an employee. They could edit him, reassign him, or fire him.
The only thing it proves is that they censor comments on their news and not the crime blog.
////The only thing it proves is that they censor comments on their news and not the crime blog.///
Proving exactly what? And so what?
There are certain folks down there who are perceived as being the future of the paper. A couple of the sports columnists (Whitlock being one) and Hart's blog, which is very popular on virtually every demographic and quite well run.
While Hart is not completely non-ideological, he is completely fair in his dealings with people on his blog and the stories he presents. His blog is almost universally respected by liberals and conservatives alike, one of the few at The Star.
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