Update: Yes, the Trib is afraid of comments
Written by Brian on October 15, 2007 – 1:40 am - Welcome, if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or subscribe to our email newsletter. Thanks for visiting!
Well, what do you know? The Marquette Tribune appears to have now officially deleted (or whatever) the 150+ comments that their MSOE piece generated.
If you now look at the Tribune’s website, the story still does not have the usual comments section near the bottom of the story, though the dialog (?) box on the right side of the page indicates that the story has 3 comments (down from 150 plus comments earlier).
Interestingly, if you look at the cached version of the site available from Google, you get the same result, whereas previously one could view the comments. I’ll admit that I’m not completely familiar with how “caching” works — maybe each site is archived again after a period of time, so the deleted comments eventually disappear?
Somehow, I don’t think that deleting 150 plus comments from unhappy MSOE students will endear Tribune staffers or MU students to MSOE students. You can’t make a problem go away simply by deleting it on your website, and Tribune staffers would learn a poor lesson if they concluded otherwise.
Why not issue a correction or a follow-up story highlighting the positive aspects of MSOE that angry MSOE students may have felt were missed? Or a general apology for mixed (certainly unintential!) messages sent by the piece?
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Posted in We're Scooping the Tribune |
October 15th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Na, I dont think they are afraid of comments. I think the problem was with the things being said. Some people were swearing and were saying malicious comments about the author of the story. I also saw some moron telling girls at MU to party at MSOE because they won’t get raped. The comments turned into MSOE students retaliating and being vulgar. Some comments were legit, but most were also getting out of control. Instead of being a mediator and picking and choosing which comments stay and which go, they just shut it down completely. I think it’s understandable. Oh well. People are upset, but they’ll get over it. Don’t they always?
October 15th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I think Sara is right. The course of action was understandable and a follow up story is probably a good idea to.
October 15th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I suspect that any rational student at MSOE will understand why the Trib pulled the comments. As for any IRrational students, well, why SHOULD the Trib care what they think?
There are a lot of bb’s that shut-down altogether because of these moderator-nightmares.
sean s.
October 15th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Another reason the Tribune would delete 150 plus comments on the story would be because those comments are an indicator that highlights a poorly written, highly controversial piece.
If you delete all of the comments, all of a sudden it looks like the rest of the stories out there and people don’t understand how offensive so many MSOE students found the story.
We get thousands of comments here at Gop3.com and somehow we manager to filter them for obscenities, why can’t the tribune deal with 150?
October 15th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
I looked at the alverno comments from that article *during It’s supposed to be Political on MU Radio from 4-6* and saw that there are MSOE comments there (1-2) that suggest how much better that article is than the MSOE one