Last month, we wrote about a local news website in Illinois that was getting frustrated with the dialog in its comments, and it instituted a "cooling off period" where it shut down its comments for a while, hoping that it would drive away the less desirable comments. The whole thing made no sense to us. Those types of commenters would eventually come back, and the solution should be offering better incentives and better overall discussion for commenters, not blocking out everyone. And yet... (without giving credit to the site that led the way last month), it looks like super popular gadget blog Engadget has done the same thing, apparently after comments over the whole iPad thing got too heated. Engadget, of course, is owned by AOL -- and you would think that if there were any company out there that understood group dynamics online by now, it would be AOL. Honestly, I'm still really confused as to what this will actually do, other than make Engadget a lot less interesting for those readers who took part in the community.

Via Romenesko we learn of local Illinois news site Pantagraph.com that has suspended comments on local news stories as a "cooling off period" after it felt that the comments had become too uncivil. I'm wondering how this will actually help. This is the internet that we're talking about here, and once the comments are turned back on, I would imagine that they'll quickly return to the same level of civility (or lack thereof) pretty quickly. If you want to create more civil commenting policies, a "time out" doesn't do that. Putting in place better incentives does.

On November 26th (Thanksgiving), the Washington Post put up an article about the group Public Enemy and its efforts to help the homeless in DC. Nice enough. However, there was one oddity in the article. It claimed that the band's famous song 911 is a Joke was about the attacks of September 11th. Yes, this is a song that was released in 1990. And if you've ever heard it, you know that it's about the phone number you call for emergencies. I mean the first line of the song is "I dialed 911 a long time ago....".

Now, I guess this is a mistake that anyone could make if they were totally unfamiliar with Public Enemy or its music -- but you would think that someone writing an article about the band would at least learn a little about the music it released. Furthermore, we're constantly told about how the mainstream press is important because they have fact checkers. Apparently, they took Thanksgiving off.

But, a bigger point is brought forth by Mathew Ingram who points out that people in the comments of the article pointed out the mistake really quickly and it took an entire week for the Washington Post to get around to making a correction.

Now, everyone makes mistakes now and again, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it does demonstrate a few things. Just claiming you have fact checkers doesn't make you significantly more accurate at times. Separately, we've pointed out in the past how bad newspapers seem to be with actually engaging with commenters on their site, and this highlights why they're making a big mistake. Yes, it's work. Yes, sometimes there can be a lot of junk in the comments, but you can also learn a lot -- such as when you've made a huge mistake.

We've been absolutely stunned by the Italian attempt to prosecute Google execs over a YouTube video. If you don't recall the story, apparently some schoolboys taunted a disabled boy by throwing a tissue box at him. They filmed the entire ordeal and posted it to YouTube. Because of the video, the kids in the video were actually held liable for the taunting. It actually helped bring those kids to justice. Meanwhile, Google took down the video as soon as they were alerted to it by the authorities (within a couple hours of finding out about it). But Italian prosecutors insist not only that Google should have blocked the video entirely, but the fact that they left it up means that its execs are guilty of criminal violations and deserve jailtime.

In pressing the case forward, prosecutors are claiming that Google must have known about the nature of the video because there were comments on the YouTube video expressing disgust over the video. It's as if they believe that Google execs read all the comments posted to YouTube and use those to pick and choose which videos should stay up and which should be taken down.

In the meantime, I'm still wondering why Italian prosecutors are not trying to push the tissue manufacturer in jail as well, as I would argue that those who made the package of tissues thrown at the boy are at least as, if not more, responsible for the actions of those kids as Google.

One of the points we've tried to make around here regularly is that this blog is not a traditional journalism effort. I am not a "reporter." I do not go out seeking stories to report on. I write about what I find interesting and I give my opinion on it -- and I do so in a way where I expect a discussion to happen in our comments from which we can all learn. I find that to be a lot better of an experience for everyone involved than to go out talking to a bunch of people behind closed doors and then writing up a "one true report" on the matter that probably leaves out half of the interesting stuff. Instead, I post what seems interesting and the comments are then very much a part of the story.

I've written many times before that we get more than enough stories sent to us by readers -- and I find plenty of interesting stories myself. I can't think of a single case where a PR person has turned me onto a PR story that I've cared about and hadn't already seen elsewhere. But PR people still fill my inbox daily with stories about all sorts of stuff we'd never write about, because they clearly don't read the site. They assume that any tech story is automatically relevant, so they spam me and probably 100 other sites. Perhaps some of them care and find the emails useful, though I doubt it.

In the last year or two, there's been a growing number of PR people who have moved on to a new tactic. Since actually getting press to cover the company you're representing is difficult, they now send around emails to writers about certain news stories, saying that so-and-so exec at such-and-such company, which has absolutely nothing to do with the story at hand, is "available for comment" on this story. So, for example, if two big companies announce a partnership, a PR person will send an email saying that some startup CEO in a market impacted by that partnership (barely), is "available for comment" about that partnership. It's basically a desperate PR person's attempt to get some press for a client where none is warranted.

Except, of course, we never quote people for posts here. We're not reporters. We're not looking for sources. We write about our opinions on stories and that's it. We'll quote another article, in order to comment on it, but we're not looking for sources at all. If you read Techdirt, you'd know that.

I recently put a message on Twitter about this, saying that, for all the PR people who had someone "available for comment" on stories, the comments on Techdirt are enabled and open for them to comment on any story they feel is relevant. It got a really good response on Twitter, so I figured I'd expand on it into a post. If you are a PR person, and you represent someone who has "a comment" on a particular story, please point them to the site where they are free to comment away, along with everyone else, as a part of a conversation, not some PR effort. And, please don't be offended if I just emailed you a link to this post in response to your offer to have some random exec "comment" on some unrelated story.

Via Romenesko comes this little gem of how the online editor of StlToday.com got upset about a "vulgar" comment that was left on a story. The editor, Kurt Greenbaum, noticed that the commenter in question's IP address was a local school, and contacted the school to alert them that someone from there had left a comment. And then:

"About six hours later, I heard from the school's headmaster...The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot."

Lesson of the day? Don't post comments on StlToday.com or its editors may call your boss.

Boing Boing points us to a story coming out of Italy, concerning what appears to be a former politician with a... colorful past, Salvatore Cuffaro (he was apparently found guilty of helping the Mafia), who is upset about the comments on a YouTube video that involves himself, but which is from the early 90s. So, he's "laid charges" against all 4,609 commenters (since then, many more have commented). I'm not familiar enough with the legal system of Italy to quite understand what these charges mean, but the link above comes from an Italian political party, Italia dei Valori, which apparently is considered "anti-corruption." Apparently, that party is offering to cover the legal defense of any of the commenters who need the help. The translated text from Italia dei Valori isn't entirely clear -- and I'm not even sure what's wrong with the video or the commenters, or what people are being charged with exactly -- so please help fill in the blanks in the comments. However, any time you have a politician even threatening to sue thousands of YouTube commenters, you know something has gone wrong.

We've complained in the past about how rare it is for reporters at newspapers to actually engage in comments on their articles. Instead, they seem to view the comments with disdain, pointing out how idiotic many comments are. Well, of course that's what happens when the folks at the actual newspaper ignore them. So, while it's nice to see a newspaper like the Cleveland Plain Dealer (whose writers have been advocating for changing copyright law to protect newspaper business models) finally realize that its reporters need to engage in comments in order to foster more of a useful community in those comments, it's really quite stunning that it's taken this long for newspapers to figure it out -- and that such a "revelation" requires a special announcement from the newspaper itself.

We're joining the online conversation. For too long, we at The Plain Dealer posted stories on cleveland.com and then turned away to focus on the next day's news. Now, we're encouraging our reporters and editors to pay attention to what you're saying, to answer your questions and respond to your complaints.

A newspapers' true asset is the community it serves. Too many in the newspaper business have been neglecting that community. It's great that this particular newspaper seems to have finally figured it out, though it's amazing that it took this long and is such a big change in focus that it requires an announcement.

Last week, I had seen the news that a defamation lawsuit from an ex-Congressman in NY against an "anonymous" online critic had been dismissed as an anti-SLAPP violation. This is good news, and we really could use a national anti-SLAPP law that prevents the filing of bogus lawsuits designed to shut people up. However, Sam Bayard, over at the Citizen Media Law Project, digs into the details on this case, noting that an earlier judge had already revealed the anonymous commenter. The whole thing is pretty odd, but basically, it looks like the first judge relied on a lower bar in determining whether or not anonymity should be allowed -- claiming that no actual malice needed to be proved. However, when the revealed commenter filed an anti-SLAPP claim, the new judge had to take "actual malice" into account, and couldn't find any, thus tossing out the case. Still, it does seem like an odd, and vaguely troubling, result to find out that an anonymous commenter was unmasked... only to have the case thrown out on anti-SLAPP grounds at a later date. Just the fact that the guy was revealed may serve as disincentive for future critics to speak their minds.

There have been a lot of stories lately about those who feel wronged demanding the identify of anonymous commenters. The latest such story, sent in by Kent Newsome involves a guy, Lucas Coe, who was charged in the death of his girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter. The local news organizations in Houston wrote about the case, and the stories generated plenty of comments. So, Coe's attorneys are demanding the identifying information on approximately 300 commenters. They're defending the request by saying that "the specificity of some comments that made it appear they came from people with personal knowledge of the case." Really? All 300 said stuff so specific that it appeared they had personal knowledge of the case? Or... is it just that his lawyers don't like what people are saying? Trying to find out the identities of anonymous speakers seems like a clear attempt to stifle free speech through intimidation. Luckily, the news organizations are defending their commenters' right to be anonymous. Hopefully, the courts agree.