This August, NPR announced that it was removing the comments sections from its online articles. They cited the cost of maintaining a commenting platform, the ugliness of the arguments that arose, and the relatively miniscule portion of readers who actually commented:
“In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters... That's 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.”
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As a devoted reader of comments, I was distraught at this news. I often learn more from reading the comments section than I do from the article. In fact, probably 75-80 percent of the online reading I do is comments. Differences of opinion fascinate me. I’m curious what people as a whole—not just the author—really think.
I also like to see how people argue with each other: which arguments work and which don’t, which fights get the ugliest, which topics are truly the most difficult to agree on. Some disagreements are caused by prejudice or ignorance, and are solved by education. Other disagreements are based on deep, irreconcilable ethical differences.
And so I’m frustrated when I read an article that contains no comments section, or see that dreaded “Comments are closed” line (which usually means, “This article was extremely controversial, and we don’t want to deal with the fallout”).
I sometimes even feel my effort to read the article was wasted if there’s no discourse following it.
Internet comments sections are not well-loved. Most people would argue that comments get ugly, that they are crass, that they are full of “trolls,” that they give you a headache and make the internet a terrible place—or that they are somehow representative of humanity itself being, or becoming, terrible.
But I’m a strong proponent of keeping comments sections open, even when the resulting discussions are less than harmonious. Here’s why.
Without comments, an article lacks context. It’s not always easy to tell how expert a writer is on the topic they’ve taken on. It’s also not always easy to grasp the temperature of a debate, the controversy that may surround it, and its place in culture when you don’t have a chorus of voices chiming in. Many authors are not experts, particularly for casual publications that put out opinion pieces. Of course, that’s not the case for a reputable site like NPR, but even writers with strong ethics who write for high-quality publications can fall victim to implicit biases. Therefore, comments provide an important type of context. Comments combat the likelihood of bias, inaccuracies, or—in some cases—ridiculous conjecture or projecting sliding through as fact.
An article with no discussion is not enough information in the digital age. If someone publishes an article that 90 percent of readers disagree with and there’s no comments section showing that disagreement, the article takes on an overinflated importance because readers will inevitably wonder if they’re the ones who are mistaken or have an unusual view.
Social media does not replace the interaction that takes place in comments sections. In explaining their decision to ditch the comments, NPR expressed confidence that social media will take over as a forum for reader discussion. The interaction that you’d see in a comments section can take place on social media to some level, but it’s dispersed, subject to privacy settings and platform membership, and difficult to find. Unless you’re very plugged in, it’s exhausting to imagine being able to corral all the reactions to an article from ten different social media sites.
Comments sections might show the bad sides of humanity, but they also show the good sides. Reddit is one often-cited example of a discussion forum gone wrong. Indeed, plenty of what you'll see on Reddit is terrible and does threaten your faith in humanity. But at the same time, large parts of Reddit are full of the most variable, honest, and unsponsored advice and anecdata that you can find anywhere online. The takeaway? The internet’s greatest weaknesses—anonymity, no gatekeepers, anecdotal evidence, disagreements, the variety of voices—are also among its greatest strengths.
Just because a debate is unpleasant doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be having it. It’s horrible to see the prejudice that still plagues our society and rears its ugly head in comments, but comments sections so often are the places where these debates take place—where prejudice is confronted head-on. Without a comments section, people are spared from having to see this hate--but if we don’t witness the hate that exists, it’s too easy to fool ourselves into thinking that it doesn’t exist. Just like the “Comments are closed” line, a lack of any comments section shows an unwillingness to grapple with disagreement, and I would argue that’s a shortsighted philosophy for any major media company.
