The Backstory: Everything you need to know about Stuff comments (if you’re too afraid to read the Terms & Conditions)

Friday, 16 July 2021

Oh, sure, you know how to argue. But can you argue well? Let White Man Behind A Desk teach you how. (First published in 2016, but it holds up.)

The Backstory is an occasional column from Stuff Editor in Chief Patrick Crewdson offering behind-the-scenes insight into stories and newsroom decisions. You can get The Backstory as an email newsletter.

This is the lifecycle of a Stuff comment.

Our creation story begins when we publish an article or an opinion column and decide to enable comments. This creates the conditions of life.

Registered Stuff users can then post a comment at the bottom of the story page. At this stage, they’ve planted a seed but it hasn’t yet sprouted.

If the comment contains one of our banned words – say, profanity or racial epithets – our system will automatically tear it out at the roots. If the comment contains toxic language that often gets rejected, the user will get a warning asking if they really want to plant that seed there.

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Otherwise, the comment goes into a queue where one of our staff – a comment moderator or a newsroom editor – will tend to it, measuring it carefully against our terms and conditions. Is it abusive, bullying or trolling? Is it off-topic? Is it misinformation? Is it harassment or just not very nice? If so – or if it breaches our other Ts&Cs – it’ll be rejected.

Otherwise, it will be approved and will flower live on the site.

Comments are an evergreen topic for us – a common reason for readers to contact us and one of two things people invariably raise with me at parties (I’ll tell you what the other one is later).

For a while, the trend was for publishers to close comments and outsource all discussion to social media. But now, several New Zealand media outlets have revived their comments sections, presumably having seen the value of a curated experience compared to the wilds of Facebook and Twitter.

Stuff’s comments section never went away, but over the years it’s grown up.

In 2016, we launched our Civil Society project. The aim was to drain the toxic swamp and rebuild a civil new community in its place.

In 2019, after the Christchurch mosque terror attacks necessitated greater focus on the nature of online conversations, we cracked down further on both nasty comments and the causes of nasty comments.

Early this year, we upgraded our commenting platform, giving users more control over their comments section experience.

You're welcome to join the discussion in the Stuff comments, provided you're not going to be a jerk about it.

Some readers would prefer we axed comments entirely. Often they tell us that on Twitter which, ironically, is a toxic comments section on performance-enhancing drugs.

We persist with comments because we see the value of giving readers an outlet for their perspective. They keep us in touch with popular opinion, and often yield story tips. Of course, as a business we also want each visitor to Stuff to stay with us. Comments sections are ‘sticky’ – they encourage commenters to return and engage.

A subset of hardcore commenters routinely petition us to abolish all rules and let unfettered speech spread like old man’s beard. We won’t – we have no appetite for becoming a hothouse for hate, misinformation and prejudice.

And the vast majority of our audience wouldn’t want that. The history of our comments section has taught us that allowing extreme speech turns off the much larger group of readers who aren’t frothing at the mouth.

As it stands, we curate our comments section like a garden. For reasons of principle and practicality, we don’t open comments on every story.

If we predict a story will lead to an infestation of comments that will breach our Ts & Cs – for instance, coverage of a Waitangi Tribunal decision, which will bring out the racists – we won’t enable comments. Bitter experience has taught us some topics inevitably turn sour (such as 1080, Israel and Palestine, transgender issues) so we have a no-go list in our Ts & Cs.

If a story presents a legal risk – perhaps because it’s a live court case or is likely to attract defamatory comments – we won’t enable comments.

If our staffing is light, we won’t enable comments on as many stories.

Commenters sometimes ask for a personalised message explaining why comments are rejected. We’d love to be able to do that but it’s not feasible. Our commenting platform doesn’t allow us to do it automatically, and we receive too many comments each day to do it manually.

The fact that we manually moderate every comment means sometimes we’re not always as fast as we’d like to be in clearing comments. We know it’s frustrating for commenters when there’s a long delay between a comment being posted and appearing on the site but like any organisation we have limited resources. The same staff are often involved in publishing stories or other vital newsroom activities.

Commenters whose comments are rejected sometimes accuse us of cultivating a political agenda. Our moderators are guided by our Ts & Cs, not by their own political opinions. If your comment “Cindy’s a lying communist” is rejected, it’s for the obvious reason – because it’s abusive – not because every Stuff employee is a Labour voter.

We have no interest in pruning opinion to force commenters to agree with us (and we're a diverse lot – often we don't even agree with us). We want robust debate and a range of opinions. But we’re also determined to have a civil and constructive environment.

This is not a breach of your free speech rights any more than you’d be breaching my free speech rights if you declined to let me camp in your living room and sing ‘Who Let The Dogs Out?’ on repeat.

Stuff is entitled to prescribe the boundaries of speech on its own platform – a position the Media Council has upheld.

So if you’ll agree to our house rules, we’d love to have you in the comments section. And if not … well, there’s always Facebook.

(Oh, and the other thing people love to raise with me at parties? It’s the Stuff quiz, and no, I don’t write the questions myself.)

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