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SALT LAKE CITY -- Users of KSL.com may have noticed a major change to the site Friday. The comment boards have been turned off -- temporarily.
The boards are being revamped with an eye toward improving civility and limiting negativity. Deseret Digital Media, KSL.com's parent company, has been wrestling with the issue of how to improve the discourse on the comment boards for months now.
President and CEO of Deseret Digital Media Clark Gilbert said, "Unfortunately, while they should be a tool to help share dialogue and help give a voice in our communities -- and often they are -- many times they become a forum for uncivil and inappropriate discussion."
The solution: a new comment board that will allow users themselves to better police and filter comments.
Whether it's sports, politics or education, through the internet, citizens share views instantly. But for many news websites, like KSL.com, the public forum on comment boards can at times be troubling.
General Manager of KSL.com Brett Atkinson said, "More recently we've seen the level of dialogue degrade and a lot of uncivil comments being made, inappropriate comments and things that really are kind of embarrassing."
The Lincoln-Douglas debates it isn't. Often times, it's more like the Wild West.
"Even though it's a small amount of our audience, they seem to create quite a ruckus among the community," Atkinson said.
Comment traffic on KSL.com is less than 1 percent of total users. But a few posters have insulted victims of tragic events or posted hate speech, and comments on hot-button stories involving immigration, religion or gay rights often devolve.
Atkinson said, "This is definitely a reason why we're making the changes we are."
The revamped KSL.com message boards will allow more transparency between users, better ability to monitor comments, and the ability to provide context by rating comments. Users will be able to rate with tags such as ‘persuasive,' ‘insightful,' ‘funny,' ‘inappropriate,' ‘uncivil' and ‘unsubstantiated.'
Ultimately, the goal is not to limit public debate, but make it better.
"One mistake people would make is to say, ‘Oh, you're trying to control the dialogue,'" Gilbert said. "That's the last thing we're doing. We want an open discussion, but we want it to be civil."
Deseret Digital Media views the change as an integral part to following the company's mission to champion virtues, like respect and civility.
"We as a company, because of our mission statement and our values, we believe that we need to put forth an honest effort to really elevate the dialogue on our comment board," Atkinson said.
The new comment boards will be launched this Monday with more changes being rolled out in the coming months.
E-mail: jdaley@ksl.com
