(Chart by Peter Halasz)
After about a week of hard-core comment moderation for a site that gets thousands per week, you begin to recognize individual users by their style. After three months, you can recognize them even when they change user names. After six months, you can sort them into categories and predict, just from two or three initial comments, whether a particular user is redeemable or not.
After five years, which is about how long I oversaw comment moderation for most of the stories on cleveland.com, you start sorting the people you hear at the table next to you in restaurants into the same categories as commenters, and dream about having a function for life that would allow you to erase their stupid remarks or, better yet, revoke their status as human beings. That’s when it’s time to hang up the delete button and move on.
This is in no way to denigrate the value of online comments, and certainly not to advocate for eliminating them or even for requiring proof of ID. (“We would have more honest, kinder, civil exchanges if people used their real names,” Alicia C. Shepard wrote for Nieman Reports, and I thought, who says that’s what we should want?) Rather, it’s a reflection of the psychic wear and tear that come with comment moderation.
Having left that grind behind, I want to give something back to those who will follow in my clicks: a guide to commenter types, with some suggestions about how to deal with each. To prepare for this, I’ve been looking at what others have suggested.
The very specific lists
Meryl Yourish described 8 types of anti-Semitic commenters; Linda Holmes, “The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections Of Year-End Lists.” These are good lists, but they they make the mistake of thinking their jerks are special. The worst and the best of online commenters can be found on any large site, on any topic. Meryl, for example, picks out the Faux Jew:
The Faux Jew likes to pretend to be a bloodthirsty, bigoted asshat who puts up gleeful comments about the death of Palestinians. He uses the word “goyim” a lot (because he thinks that all Jews, when talking among ourselves, use the word “goyim” a lot, always in a derogatory fashion).
The Faux Jew is just one breed of the broad category of “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” commenters. Faux Jew’s relatives are black — they swear! — but wish Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would talk about black-on-black violence and black-on-white violence and why single black women on welfare should be forced to use birth control. And they’re Democrats who’ve never voted for a Republican before but this Obamacare just goes too far. Their distant cousins are the average, everyday citizens who just happen to show up whenever Mayor Doe is being criticized to defend him vigorously.
Holmes calls out:
The Person Who Is Exactly Right. “It really seems like this list of things you thought were good is just your opinion.”
Columnists and editorial writers know these people well, the ones who complain that editorials are too one-sided and columnists should let readers think for themselves. They are slightly lower down the evolutionary tree from the commenters who were outraged that The Plain Dealer’s PolitiFact Ohio, an outpost of the national operation with a narrower focus (exactly what it says on the tin), was fact-checking comments by Ohio politicians rather than looking into Benghazi.
The incomplete lists
I had more luck finding generalists at smaller blogs; perhaps those authors are realistic enough to realize that they’re probably not unique in attracting jerks. Susan Erasmus explained 9 types in a post I found at Nichecare.com; Chris Bertram on Crooked Timber’s list of 10 is terse but far-ranging.
It reinforced my belief that all commenters are alike to find this entry from Erasmus, who writes about health:
The Political Animal. There is nothing in life that doesn’t have a political angle, and that includes lunchtime sandwiches, hurricanes, kids’ toys. This person will manage to find a way to twist any, and I mean any, conversation around to their particular point of view.
Oh, my, yes. And political animals exist in a symbiotic relationship with the easily distracted — commenters who are reasonable and on-topic when undisturbed, but can be led astray (SQUIRREL!) — and the “I see what you did there” folks who call out anyone else’s political meanderings, and eventually start calling them out before they occur (“I just came here to see how long it would take before someone blamed Obama for this house fire.”)
Bertram, though, has such a narrow delineation of one type of commenter that he made me wish cleveland.com’s commenters had been that easy:
The commenter who notices that a CT author said P in 2005 and not-P in 2008, and who gives every impression of compiling an archive of such contradictions.
Just keeping tabs on the site’s contributors? Piece of cake. Try dealing with commenters who dig into other users’ comment histories. And they don’t just point out inconsistencies. They apparently compile dossiers from clues and off-hand, one-off remarks, then drop their intelligence into conversations in ways that make the other users feel (with good reason) that they’re being stalked.
In the weeks to come, I’ll assemble my own list. I’m aiming for something that’s not just humorous and possibly informative, but also gives comment moderators some tips. Suggestions and contributions are welcome.
Toward a taxonomy of online commenters
Posted in Comments By John Kroll On September 6, 2013(Chart by Peter Halasz)
After about a week of hard-core comment moderation for a site that gets thousands per week, you begin to recognize individual users by their style. After three months, you can recognize them even when they change user names. After six months, you can sort them into categories and predict, just from two or three initial comments, whether a particular user is redeemable or not.
After five years, which is about how long I oversaw comment moderation for most of the stories on cleveland.com, you start sorting the people you hear at the table next to you in restaurants into the same categories as commenters, and dream about having a function for life that would allow you to erase their stupid remarks or, better yet, revoke their status as human beings. That’s when it’s time to hang up the delete button and move on.
This is in no way to denigrate the value of online comments, and certainly not to advocate for eliminating them or even for requiring proof of ID. (“We would have more honest, kinder, civil exchanges if people used their real names,” Alicia C. Shepard wrote for Nieman Reports, and I thought, who says that’s what we should want?) Rather, it’s a reflection of the psychic wear and tear that come with comment moderation.
Having left that grind behind, I want to give something back to those who will follow in my clicks: a guide to commenter types, with some suggestions about how to deal with each. To prepare for this, I’ve been looking at what others have suggested.
The very specific lists
Meryl Yourish described 8 types of anti-Semitic commenters; Linda Holmes, “The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections Of Year-End Lists.” These are good lists, but they they make the mistake of thinking their jerks are special. The worst and the best of online commenters can be found on any large site, on any topic. Meryl, for example, picks out the Faux Jew:
The Faux Jew is just one breed of the broad category of “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” commenters. Faux Jew’s relatives are black — they swear! — but wish Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would talk about black-on-black violence and black-on-white violence and why single black women on welfare should be forced to use birth control. And they’re Democrats who’ve never voted for a Republican before but this Obamacare just goes too far. Their distant cousins are the average, everyday citizens who just happen to show up whenever Mayor Doe is being criticized to defend him vigorously.
Holmes calls out:
Columnists and editorial writers know these people well, the ones who complain that editorials are too one-sided and columnists should let readers think for themselves. They are slightly lower down the evolutionary tree from the commenters who were outraged that The Plain Dealer’s PolitiFact Ohio, an outpost of the national operation with a narrower focus (exactly what it says on the tin), was fact-checking comments by Ohio politicians rather than looking into Benghazi.
The incomplete lists
I had more luck finding generalists at smaller blogs; perhaps those authors are realistic enough to realize that they’re probably not unique in attracting jerks. Susan Erasmus explained 9 types in a post I found at Nichecare.com; Chris Bertram on Crooked Timber’s list of 10 is terse but far-ranging.
It reinforced my belief that all commenters are alike to find this entry from Erasmus, who writes about health:
Oh, my, yes. And political animals exist in a symbiotic relationship with the easily distracted — commenters who are reasonable and on-topic when undisturbed, but can be led astray (SQUIRREL!) — and the “I see what you did there” folks who call out anyone else’s political meanderings, and eventually start calling them out before they occur (“I just came here to see how long it would take before someone blamed Obama for this house fire.”)
Bertram, though, has such a narrow delineation of one type of commenter that he made me wish cleveland.com’s commenters had been that easy:
Just keeping tabs on the site’s contributors? Piece of cake. Try dealing with commenters who dig into other users’ comment histories. And they don’t just point out inconsistencies. They apparently compile dossiers from clues and off-hand, one-off remarks, then drop their intelligence into conversations in ways that make the other users feel (with good reason) that they’re being stalked.
In the weeks to come, I’ll assemble my own list. I’m aiming for something that’s not just humorous and possibly informative, but also gives comment moderators some tips. Suggestions and contributions are welcome.