Commenting on the NBC Augusta 26 website

Digital Media Manager

We are happy to provide commenting on our site and are excited that so many of our visitors feel free to speak their minds!  We've made some changes to our commenting process lately and are working on others so I wanted to take a moment to discuss some of our policies and reasoning on how we handle commenting.

Registration

We pride ourselves on not requiring you to register in order to post comments on our core website.  Several of our competitors require you to register and provide personal information in order to enter the public forum conversation and we simply feel that this is not the right way to approach it. Often registration for posting comments is used to solicit email addresses that then get added to a database for analyzing and potential contact.  Another reason for requiring registration is to discourage commenters who wish to remain anonymous.  While it is true that registration tends to stop commenters who spam or post inappropriate content, we believe that you - as our community - are fully capable of policing the public forum and, in general, are able to contribute positively and appropriately to the conversation.  We feel that the ability to express your opinion - positive or negative, anonymous or with your name proudly attached - is vital to great, straight to the point, journalism.

You might notice, however, that we do require registration to comment on blog posts. There is a distinction here, since this is a niche aspect to our site where we invite you to take a much more active role in the conversation and, in some cases, a much more personal interaction with our reporters, anchors, producers, and staff. With this invitation comes an small increase in responsibility and ownership and we want to be able to respond to what you have to say.  Your privacy is extremely important to us! We will NEVER sell or give out information you provide in your registration for this blog with anyone unless required by law.  We will never send you promotional emails based on the information you provide in registering to comment on this blog unless it relates specifically to the blog or commenting.  We have several promotional and news newsletters that you can sign up for if you would like.

Appropriate Content

It is important that we maintain a level of appropriate discourse on our site across all levels of content, from the stories we post or report on to the comments we allow to appear on the site. Since NBCAugusta.com is accessible to visitors of all ages from around the world, we feel there needs to be guidelines on appropriate content.  That said, we also believe very strongly in free speech and the right to express your opinion without undue censorship.

Here are some things that are inappropriate to post in comments:

• Curse words.
• Links of any kind (we cannot visit all links posted and cannot be responsible for the content on linked sites.)
• Threats.
• Racist comments (there is a difference between expressing your opinion and racist commentary.)
• Attributing comments to another person.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of inappropriate commenting behavior, but it represents some of the more common issues we deal with. Be aware that, depending on the severity of the inappropriateness, we may ban the IP address of commenters who continue to violate the guidelines for our commenting. 

Here are some things we love to see in comments:

• More information on the story posted (more than once, we've been able to follow up and provide deeper coverage of a story because of comments from people who were associated with a story.)
• Opinions related to the issues in a story.
• Questions you have that may not have been answered in the story.
• Mistakes you notice in the story (we'd prefer if you actually emailed the reporter or the News Director so we can fix it faster, however we appreciate you holding us accountable either way. Email addresses can found in the "About Us" section of the site.)

Keep in mind that some stories that are posted on our site come from the Associated Press (AP) and other news agencies in order to bring you the widest variety of news content possible.  We cannot control the depth of reporting, the content, or the grammar of stories from other agencies.

Flagging Comments

We rely on two methods for monitoring comments.

1. An automatic "Filth Filter"
2. Community policing

We no longer utilize a third party company to approve or disapprove our comments.  This is better for you since there were times where comments were approved that were not appropriate and disapproved when they were very appropriate.  In order to catch comments with inappropriate language in it, we rely on a program that scans the comment for a list of words that have been designated as inappropriate.  It is generally very good at what it does but occasionally it goes a little overboard and your comment may be blocked because it sees that part of a word you've used is on its list.  We monitor this as much as possible but admit that we can't always catch when this has happened.  As soon as we find a comment that has been blocked for the wrong reasons, we approve it.

We rely on your good judgment and common sense for policing the comments you come across on our site.  If you find a comment that you feel is inappropriate, simply click on the flag beside it and an email is sent to us informing us that the comment has been flagged. Note: the comment is not removed from the site unless we review it and agree that it is inappropriate.  While there are definitely many times where flagged comments are indeed inappropriate and subsequently removed, we will not remove a comment simply because someone disagrees with it.  Except for issues like those listed above, we take a fairly broad stance on comments permitted on our website. It is important to recognize that once we begin removing comments for ideological reasons it becomes a slippery slope where we only allow certain points of view to be expressed . . . and that's not a good thing at all.  So before flagging a comment, ask yourself if the reason it should be removed is more about appropriateness or because you don't agree with it.

Comments

[Nick]

I was wondering why NBC Augusta does not stream their newscasts online...Thanks!

[Digital Media Manager]

Hey there Nick,

The main reason we do not currently stream our newscast live is that we can only stream the segments themselves without the commercials or insert other commercials into the breaks and our current video transcoding service is not set up to provide that option. It is something that we are working on for the future however and appreciate your interest in watching online!

[Nickr]

Hey,I didnt think you would respond :)..I notice that many stations use Windows Media Player for streaming their live newscasts..I try to watch as many news stations online because I will entering college for broadcasting very soon and want to get different perspectives.Its neat watching the segments but I think it will be a huge help to watch the cast live online..Hope to hear from you soon!

-Nick

[Bob Oliver]

Why does it take so long for comments to show up on line, I'm talking hours. If you are not reviewing the comments with no links or cursing, what's up?

[Bob]

What a bunch of crap, my comments never got posted (it's been over 24 hours) and no answer as to why. By the way your clock is off about four hours.

[Digital Media Manager]

Bob,

Thank you for your patience! I'm not sure why your comments are taking hours to show up. Generally comments are posted immediately, although there may be some delay during high traffic times. I just ran a test and found comments posting immediately. If your comments are not posting at all, there could be a couple reasons for that. If an individual violates the Terms & Conditions enough times, they will be banned from posting comments. The system does this by banning the IP address from which the offending comments came. Since IP addresses are sometimes shared (or change), there are times when people are unable to post comments due to somebody else's actions. Feel free to contact me at the station and I'll be happy to look into this for you.

[needing to be heard]

Let me start by thanking all of you for your fairness in reporting and developing stories. I have often felt that you and yours are the voice of the "little people" that would otherwise not be heard because of social, financial, or educational reasons. I enjoy reading the comments made on your stories but must say I was a little disturbed today when the comments were removed from what is a sesitive story (5 wk old dies). If your loved ones are involved in a story, it becomes a sesitive story. The first ammendment guarantees our right to freedom of speech. Although some comments were disturbing the person(s) making them were well within their rights to do so. I hope this is not the beginning of a down hill spiral.

[Digital Media Manager]

Thanks Needing to be Heard for your support and question!

We take pride in keeping the commenting on our site as open and easy to use as possible and have made specific choices to not require registration and to use broad allowance for people to share their opinion, frustration, and questions. Comments are a difficult area to deal with from an administration standpoint and there are some legal issues as well as moral ones. There is always a balance between letting people say what is on their mind and keeping the conversation civil and appropriate. We post a statement in our Terms of Use (found at media.nbcaugusta.com/documents/Terms_of_Use.pdf) document that outlines the Code of Conduct that we expect from our visitors and states that “we reserve the right to screen, refuse to post, remove or edit user-generated content at any time and for any or no reason in our absolute and sole discretion without prior notice . . .” Before anyone can post a comment on our site they must check a box stating that they agree to abide by that Code of Conduct. (Every station or newspaper will have a variation of this).

In regards to the story you refer to, our removal of the commenting feature marks an adjustment to our policy on stories like this. The news story simply spoke about the investigation and the resulting statement from the Aiken County Coroner. While there may be people who disagree with the views of the coroner or with the results of the investigation, the forum for voicing those thoughts is not as comments to this story. We try to remove slanderous comments whenever we find them – or they are brought to our attention – and sometimes we have to err on the side of caution. Furthermore, we have found stories reporting a death particularly challenging when it comes to handling comments. Most of the time the community expresses and outpouring of support and condolences, however there are occasions where the comments take an inappropriate turn and add insult to what is already a painful experience to those who have lost a loved one. Our policy – with some exceptions – is to not allow commenting on stories that are of a particularly sensitive nature, primarily deaths not related to a crime. This is by no means an absolute policy and there are sure to be exceptions, but our intent is to be sensitive to the grieving of the victim’s family and loved ones.

I would challenge your interpretation of the First Amendment just a little, although I completely understand where you are coming from. The First Amendment - “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – discusses protections have from government regulation of speech. It does not indicate that each of us have the right to have our comments or speech placed wherever we want them. We definitely want to facilitate our viewers and visitors voicing their opinions providing they follow the Code of Conduct outlined in our Terms of Use and agreed to by visitors before they comment.

If in regards to this – or any other – story, you feel that there is more to the story or that authorities are not handling the situation correctly, I would encourage you to file a report with authorities or email our newsroom with information. We definitely want to cover newsworthy stories in our community and will do due diligence with any information we receive.

I hope this extraneously long response to your question answers at least some of your concerns. We definitely thank you for your comments and engagement with our station and website. We know that you would not have taken the time to comment if you did not care and we appreciate your support. Please feel free to email me personally if you would like any further clarification about our commenting policy at bmatthews@nbcaugusta.com.

[needing to be heard]

Thank you so much for responding to my comment.To me this shows that your station and it's associates do care. You need to contact the authorities yourselves and see what they tell you because I have done everything I can.You have my e-mail so contact me. I am always up for a good conversation.

[Amanda Rettig]

I have been trying over and over again to enter the "Spring into Parks" photo contest and it is not allowing me to do so. When I go to "submit" my pictures and stories it says error. If anyone could help it would be VERY appreciated! e-mail me at eamandar1017@ymail.com, Thank You!