Removal of comment sections
No, I have not yet removed the comment sections beneath the strips, but I am thinking about it. Tony Piro, the creator of the webcomic Calamities of Nature, has currently removed them giving the following reasons. And I’m feeling exactly the same way:
Removal of Comic Commenting
This was a hard decision for me, but I’ve decided to remove commenting from the comics. As more and more people visit this site, I’ve been becoming increasingly concerned about what I should do about comments. The original intent was to allow followup debate or feedback about the latest updates. And for the most part, this was being accomplished. But either because of the provocative topics I sometimes write about, or my own mismanagement of the comments, I was finding the discussions to be less and less constructive. If someone posts a dumb comment, what should I do? Delete it? I don’t want to appear as if I’m quashing debate or censoring certain opinions. Not to mention, there’s only so much time in a day, and I don’t want to waste it pulling my hair out, anguishing over which comments to delete. But if I don’t deal with it, it invites even more less-than-constructive counter comments. This was especially getting bad for some of the older comics in the archive, where many had built up long comment threads. I know most people are smart enough to separate the comments from my artistic expression, but at the same time, I still think it was reflecting poorly on my comic. For these reasons, I’ve removed the comments, at least for a time. In a couple of weeks, I’ll probably reassess the situation and decide whether to keep this change.
I still think that a comment section is a great way to get some feedback and to communicate with readers who want to ask a quick question. But just like Tony, I was (and still am) seriously annoyed by some of the comments the last strips with a political or ecological message have gotten.
Update: Apparently I’m not the only one who doesn’t like those comments. I guess my resentments against them can’t be totally wrong when random readers call them “absolutely ridiculous” and “badly written” on another website.
Go ahead and drop the comments. That’s what the discussion forum should be used for.
perhaps you should look into Disqus or Intense Debate to power your comments. Requiring registered comments along with posting a short comment policy may help in cutting things down.
Moderate them with a chainsaw. If you don’t like it, it doesn’t belong here. It’s your webcomic after all.
You might consider a shoutbox. Thunderstruck has one where people post interesting thoughts on comics as the appear, ask quick questions, and have built a small but pleasant community. It doesn’t keep posts for very long, so there isn’t a problem of large backlogs of less than helpful comments, just a few notes passed back and forth.
You can see it in action here: http://talesfromthevault.com/thunderstruck/
Brad Guigar (Evil Inc.; Courting Disaster) uses two items to control the potential insanity of comments. 1. He requires a registered user account; and 2. each topic locks either after a certain amount of time or after the next topic gets posted (hard to tell which; CD runs on a roughly-weekly basis).
Whoever decided that comments are an absolute must anyway? They’re unnecessary, more often than not you’ll just get somebody mouthing off.
You’ll be better off without them. I read your comic because it’s neat, that’s all there is to say ¦D
It would be a shame to lose the comments.
Mind you, my contributions are pretty minimal comments-wise, I just like having lots of ways to say very little.
I would suggest that he should create a forum. Isn’t that hard to do. A comment section is quite honestly a newbie thing. Most people eliminate any and all chance of commenting or create a forum to host all the comments. Jeffery Rowland had this same dilemma and he got rid of the comment section. But people still comment on his live journal and even then that won’t stop people from emailing you.
This is what it means to put yourself out there. Your going to have to take some form of potshot you can’t escape a nasty comment or a nice one. You only have two choices. Deal with it or get rid of it.
Seems to me they don’t hurt any less when they’re well-written. If anything that makes em harder to shake off. I hate hearing that an intelligent person disagrees with me.
Still, could be worse, you could have a tagboard. XD
I disagree with you, Coldfusion. You sperm.
I say create a forum for the people who feel a need to debate about the comics. That way you can still keep the comment section for the rest. It’d really be a shame if you got rid of it. Can’t you ban commenters (by way of nickname or email address) that have proven to be disrespectful? That should make things managable.
But I support the comic by buying merchansie. How dare you suggest my banning, Alectric, you’re just plain rude, that’s what you are. A big rudey rudey ruder.
@ Alectric: Until now I have banned two users who really deserved it, but banning should always be the last measure against vandals, trolls and hatemongers.
I am now thinking about disabling comments when a strip deals with American politics or the environment since those topics certainly attract the most harmful comments. Something like “That’s l4me!!1” is not doing much harm, but “You should be ashamed to say X in your comic although [followed by an uninformed, heavily biased rant]” does.
I can’t say I’ve bene faulted for posting a demeaning line or three,but it hasn’t been as severe as what I have read in post comic strips I have had no issue with.Even though discussion on comics would be cut in half,readership would not,so it is ultimately up to keep comments or not.I do,however,suggest against a shoutbox.Those usually incite the things you mentioned including heavy amounts of idiocy and poor grammar.
Comments sections are great for new comics with a low number of readers. Your comic has surpassed that. On my comic, I’ve turned off comments for older comics because those are particularly annoying.
A forum would certainly give better control AND keep lame comments from being so in-your-face when reading the strips.
In my opinion, I’d say either have commenters migrate to the forums (where you CAN moderate with an iron fist if need be. No one says you have to be nice to jerks) or, as was suggested further up, get a shoutbox. They’re small, unintrusive, and are effective.
http://xkcd.com/202/
The reason comments are generally so retarded is because it doesn’t take any effort to post them. It takes 30 seconds to show the world you’re an idiot. If you drop the comments section, you won’t miss much because the people who really want to give you feedback will spend the time necessary to hit the forums and maybe send you an e-mail. Dump the comments.
Brooke McEldowney asked Comics.com to remove the “Comments” section for his newspaper strip, “9 Chickweed Lane”, which runs there {http://mycomics.com/9_chickweed_lane} because the cuisine-challenged bridge substructure symbionts {http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/pib/2002/pib021218.gif} were getting a bit too obnoxious, but the one for his online-only comic, “Pibgorn” {http://www.gocomics.com/pibgorn} is still running and has attracted an Interesting Crew.
The strip for Monday, 31 August, has 275 comments [most of only tangential relevance to the strip] as it approaches the switchover to the Tuesday strip.
The “Pibgorn” comments list has become a group of people with common interests who hang out there; while we certainly discuss the comic – in greater detail than often happens on other “Comment” sections – we also talk about anything and everything and basically have about ten different conversations going on at once.
(In fact, GoComics has at least once redesigned its “Comments” section because the original setup couldn’t handle the volume of comments generated on the “Pibgorn” list…)
Whether you wish to retain a comments section ought to depend on whether the comments section serves a purpose for you. The only useful purpose I can imagine comments serving would be for feedback of people who enjoy your strip. I hope all of you get the praise you deserve; comments sections are a painful way to receive praise when they’re peppered with various offensive and bothersome remarks.
I think you are right to disable the comments on the political issue ones, and what-not… I may not agree with the strips at times, but they’re based on your beliefs and you’re the writer. I’m not going to stop reading unless I really disagree, and even then I like Sandra and Woo too much to give it up. X] Like some people got all huffy about…
That one comment on the tribute pissed me off when they got all huffy because it was political tribute not based on their beliefs. X] I liked your response to it though.
delete any comment that is unnecessarily negative or hateful, the comments section is for feedback on the comic or for civilised debate, not for racist ranting. there are plenty of other places people can go for that
While it’s totally up to you about disabling comments under the comics, I offer the perspective that at last you get comments, which sohws that people are passionate about your work. 🙂 I’d be lucky to get one comment a week.
I’ll admit there’s a quite understandable reason I go by Little Loud Mouse-mainly, I can’t keep my mouth shut when someone’s being obnoxiously stupid, which doesn’t help anything except makin’ me feel better.
As for the real point: To keep it simple, I’d say go for it-if people are going to stoke their egos by being hateful ’cause they’re insecure about themselves, then they can do it somewhere else where there’s a better chance someone’s going to call them out for it.
But that’s just my opinion. 😉
Frankly, I love to comment on strips but if too many jerks are spamming your comic, then yes, you should get rid of it. I am ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS that someone would pose as you and write a profane and demeaning comment (the Wile E. Coyote one). Granted that is the first time that has happened but what would keep it form happening again? On the tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. Speech, I loved it and it was inspiring and I commented. I then rechecked the same comic later and found that you have removed the comments. I think It would be good to remove comments on comics that are somewhat touchy with others so that they can’t diss you for showing your beliefs. If you do remove the comments though, I hope that you would bring it back in a month or so too see what you like better. I hope my ideas help.
Ahaha.
I think this is maybe the third comment I’ve made on your comic strips, if that. I certainly wouldn’t object to seeing the comments section gone as I almost never look at it anyway for one of the reasons the LJ post you linked to mention – most of the comments I read, I can hardly understand due to chatspeak abuse. I support your decision to remove them, should you decide to.
I think you should leave the comments.
Maybe if people had to register before commenting, it would help?
But I think most people know enough to ignore the idiots.
This is a problem that is almost as old as the internet itself. Looking at the comments that have been made, the site doesn’t appear to have picked up anything particularly nasty – so far. But the flamers, griefers and trolls are out there, and they will come visiting eventually. Some site operators have even shut their sites down when the hate mail became too much for them, and others do have to spend significant amounts of time moderating comments in order to avoid a meltdown.
Speaking personally (this being my second comment here), I wouldn’t feel much of a loss if the comments sections were to be annihilated, as I would be losing little in the way of past effort or future expectation, but others may be in a different situation. If the nettle is going to be grasped here, it would be better to do it sooner rather than later, and do it once and once only. A shoutbox-type thing, where comments get pushed down and eventually expire would be self-cleaning, and remove any expectation that anyone’s words would be preserved for posterity, but cause a drop in quality because of it. A forum with a moderated registration would involve some work, but it would deter casual flamers and make it more work for people to sneak back on after being banned. And it is possible to run a site like this without any sort of official public feedback feature at all. (One could even wait for someone else to start a third-party site dedicated to S&W, and link to them!)
On the subject of politics (or religion, nudity, graphic sex, graphic violence, LGBT, BDSM, really bad puns, etc.), I would say it is up to the creator to decide what to include, what drums to bang (if any), and accept the fact that some people will be put off by it. Be pragmatic and maximize your audience, or follow your heart and accept some losses. Personal anecdote: Carson Fire’s Elf Life was often accompanied by strongly pro-Bush/Republican bloggings, to the point where I found it irksome. It didn’t stop me reading the comic – that was down to the frequency with which the apparently epic storyline got broken (and rebooted) whenever his enthusiasm for a particular story arc seemed to wane.
Why exactly should banning be the last measure taken? You give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but if they are shown to abuse the comments section, you don’t allow them to comment anymore. If you wanted to be less strict, you could set it up so that first time abusers have their comments go straight to moderation. Then take it from there.
As for preventing someone from impersonating you, you could ban your own username from the comments section. But since you’re exempt from the bans yourself, you could still post normally. Just an option.
You are suffering of a problem intrinsecally connected to having an oftenly controvertial strip. When one does that, public backlash from a vocal and touchy minority MUST be expected. You either shrug it off and let it exist as the unavoidable and recurrent weeds on your garden, or you just pave all over the garden and call a day. It all depends on your own viewpoint in the matter. If you want to be controvertial, why would you shush the very controversy you are causing? To receive negative comments from the supporters of the issue you attacked in any given script, means that you hit the nail in the head. Would you rather receive not feedback at all? Wondering if your comic is having any kind of impact in people, if you are really being witty and topical, or just shooting blanks?
I’m an avid webcomics readers, so from my experience of seeing hundreds of them, I can give you this advice: be extra nice to your commenters, reply often, shrug the naysayers, focus on the fans. That usually creates a community of rabidly loyal followers that will comment each day until forming a community, which will deal by themselves with the opposing minority until crushing it in submission. Then, you can move the thing altogheter to a forum. Being curt and getting into fights with your offenders while ignoring the praisers will only give more fuel to the bad people while not inspiring the good ones to stand up for your cause.
I believe that just taking out the comments may be an immediate an easier solution, but be warned that you, (and by association, your strip) will seem impersonal and cold. We live in the Web 2.0 times and people is no longer interested in being a still espectator. Lack of interactivety and ability of creating one’s own content is a huge turn off.
Beholden – not as smart as they’d like to be.
So…comments disabled then. Interesting.
Novil says:
Tuesday, 1 September 2009 at 02:02
@ Alectric: Until now I have banned two users who really deserved it, but banning should always be the last measure against vandals, trolls and hatemongers.
I am now thinking about disabling comments when a strip deals with American politics or the environment since those topics certainly attract the most harmful comments. Something like “That’s l4me!!1” is not doing much harm, but “You should be ashamed to say X in your comic although [followed by an uninformed, heavily biased rant]” does.
Based on what you have written here, I think that you should get rid of the comments section. You are not interested in having your views or the positions you take challenged, you are simply looking for praise.
>Adam K Line … I don’t think that’s the issue. Constructive critism and informed debate is fine, even if it gets a little heated between those who may hold polar opposite views with good reasons supporting them (e.g. a cartoonist and someone who was a fan but may soon not be). Ignorant flaming and outright trolling or abuse is not.
Because of the propensity of comments to devolve into the latter quite often, or otherwise be quite inane, I tend not to bother joining in or often even viewing them unless I either really like a strip, it provokes serious thought, or I feel there’s an error to be corrected. Otherwise it’ll be like AOL invading Usenet all over again. Or worse, Youtube commentary…. ugh.
But I would be sad to see them go completely. Some interesting stuff has been discussed before, and some useful information (e.g. chocolate toxicity for various pets) brought together as a group effort, and this is also how S&W ended up with a separate english language editor IIRC 😉
BTW, the strip has an actual discussion board?
ooh, up/downvoting has been retrospectively activated on old threads also. this could be interesting.