Had a few things on my mind about comments so figured it was time to check in.
It’s been different without the great Lisa Caballero around. Not only did she do some great writing and reporting for BikePortland, she also spent a lot of time reading, moderating, and writing comments. She would also encourage folks to make “Comment of the Week” nominations and then she’d choose one and write it up on Monday mornings. Lisa understood that to me, it’s not about the quantity of comments we get, but the quality.
Without Lisa’s help, all that comment work has fallen to me. I’m alone these days when it comes to editorial work. I’ve actually scaled back in general and am transitioning to more of an intentional “just a guy with blog” type of outlet. But that’s a topic for a different day.
Back to the comment section. I still read each one that comes in and they all get held back until I manually approve them. But I don’t take as much time to consider each one like Lisa did. And I’m sorry but I haven’t been able to do a Comment of the Week on Mondays. I still want to add that to my weekly rhythm however, so please keep nominating (by replying with “comment of the week” or “cotw”).
Generally, folks have been well-behaved and we have very few mean, troll-ish folks (and when they do pop up, I just delete them and move on). That’s a testament to our community and moderation work over the years. That being said, I always appreciate folks giving me a heads up about comments they feel are inappropriate. Remember, being solo means I have no proofreader, no editor, no second set of eyes to run things by! Just like those of you who point out typos and other mistakes, BikePortland a community endeavor and I value — and need — your help on stuff like this.
This week in particular was very busy in the comment section. So far we’ve had about 450 comments total since Monday. One reader saw how that guest article by Missy LeDoux racked up nearly 300 comments and wondered what our all-time high comment record was. I took a look and it was fun to see the list.
Below are the top 10 most commented articles in BikePortland history (since April 2005) along with their date of publication and total comment count:
- Wanted: your close calls (08/09/05): 725
- With six kids and no car, this mom does it all by bike (06/28/2012): 488
- Why Jolene Friedow only got a traffic ticket in the collision that killed Mark Angeles (11/09/2015): 484
- After slapping car, rider gets unexpected chat with Portland police officer (12/14/16): 433
- Road rage incident sparks media frenzy, spurs us-them mentality (07/10/2008): 409
- Colville-Andersen: “Portland is completely overrated as a bike city” (01/03/2018): 387
- Updated: Cyclist dies after collision with garbage truck (10/22/2007): 367
- Springwater path users feel threatened by campers, police say their hands are tied (01/14/2016): 367
- Speeding driver kills teenage girl who was crossing SE Hawthorne (08/20/2016): 352
- Home demolition critics back resolution that would block central-city density (12/09/2014): 344
Quite the gamut of topics, huh? I love how it reflects the broad array of things I’ve published here. We’ve got tragedies, a fun profile of a carfree mom (that went viral before that really existed), some old-fashioned activism, the emergence of the homelessness crisis in Portland, some police stuff — and I’m so glad one of Michael Andersen’s housing stories made the cut!
I could tell a story about each one. All the emotions and wild bits of detail that surround them. What’s cool is if you go back and browse those comment sections, you can feel some of that emotion without even hearing it from me. That’s the magic of a good comment section! It’s a capsule of our community’s emotions, stories and insights. I cherish all 574,408 of them.
If you don’t typically comment for some reason, I’d love to know why. If there’s anything I can do to encourage you, please let me know. And if you do comment frequently, please remember it’s a privilege, not a right. Treat other commenters as if you were talking to them in person, give the benefit of the doubt and keep an open mind.
Every comment is a contribution to this community, which is something I feel is more important than ever as some of the conversations have splintered off into social media. I like those comment sections too, but it just doesn’t feel like home.
Thanks for being part of BikePortland. I appreciate your comments.
Thanks for reading.
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Can you do interviews with BP’s top 10 commenters, and ask them what they do for their day jobs?! 😉
Those who wrote the most comments? Or those who had the most successful Comments of the Week designations? Or those with the most COTW nominations? Or perhaps (like the black jersey in the Tour De France) those with the most “comment deleted by the editor” postings?
How did The Great Blinking Light Debate not make it? “F**k you and your epileptic bike lights!”
Ah yes that is a classic one. Probably in top 100 or so with 264 comments
https://bikeportland.org/2014/07/08/grafitti-northwest-portland-rages-blinking-bike-lights-108410
#9: Feeling all the emotion of Fallon Smart’s needless death, almost 9 years later. I can’t help but mix my issues because this one involved so much more than just Portland’s problems. Recent national events with unprecedented collusion with mideast states makes this hit even harder. Would the current admin. send Abdulrahman Noorah home on the Qatari Air Force One? Or will they actually enforce this new policy
https://bikeportland.org/2023/06/23/new-state-department-policy-named-after-high-schooler-killed-crossing-hawthorne-blvd-376495
I just got nostalgic for Peak Commenter era, which almost certainly was Peak Portland Bicycle era, too (2008-2016). Shout out to the OG legends GlowBoy, spare_wheel, 9watts, spiffy, Gutterbunnybikes, and wsbob.
Yes in those years we would have about 3X the amount of comments we get now! Then social media happened.
It is interesting to reflect on the changes in the media (comment) landscape over that span of time. The heady days of bikeportland’s comment section. Wsbob indeed! I wonder whatever happened to him?
I wouldn’t blame social media. I’d blame the heavy handed censorship of any opinion you don’t like.
Yep – I gotta support this sentiment. When I read the last line of the article, which said:
My reaction was: Except when you don’t. I’m sure I like many others have felt stung after we put time and thought and effort into commenting and then The Moderator of BP either censored the comment or replied in detail, telling you what a complete wombat you are.
I know that comment moderation is essential – you can’t let the trolls run amok or they will spoil everything. But heavy-handed moderation creates its own problems, and my own feeling is that BP has never gotten it quite right. If you want to improve, I would suggest you start by cutting out the direct criticism of commenters’ views and see how that goes. If you’ve gotta censor or delete a comment, just do it and say it doesn’t meet the standards of the site, which you can link to, and leave it at that. Don’t rub salt in the wound.
The moderation is so heavy-handed that I wasn’t even able to read your comment! Oh, wait…
Oh gosh Jonathan, I miss BikePortland too. I’m working my rear-end off with SWTrails (I’ve been made VP). Between the new form of government, and SIPP, and cultural change within the bureaus, I feel like I’m in the thick of things. There’s a sea change happening with the city government, and I’m trying to surf it, or at least not drown.
But local, independent, journalism is super-important so keep it up if you can. I still check in, usually once day, sometimes every other, to make sure I don’t miss something important. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I occasionally push some comments through for you (but I don’t make any hard calls, leave those for you).
Thanks for your work with SWTrails, Lisa. The trails are really the best thing about living in SW Portland. Without them we’d be just like any other part of the city where you gotta walk on the streets. And since SW has hardly any sidewalks (or bike lanes), the trails are even more important.
I miss ya’ll too! I was so glad Lisa seemed confident about comment moderation, and I always appreciated Lisa for it. And I was so impressed that JM found time to read all the comments–and stay sane! I always read every comment on anything I wrote, but there is an emotional weight to doing so, to taking in every criticism–which can become personal quickly, and can feel personal, even if it’s not.
Honestly, I love the BP comment sections. I rarely use social media, and I usually think social media has a negative impact on me when I indulge. But I usually found that I learned a great deal from BP’s comment sections. So much wisdom from the Portland cycling community can be found in the discussions. I was regularly delighted by the quality of comments–I learned so much about Portland history, cycling tips, cycling advocacy, local politics, debates about what kind of infrastructure and laws make cyclists safer….and that cyclists and advocates have many disagreements amongst themselves. Truly, the comment sections have been full of treasure. On many occasions I have felt that I have learned as much from the comment sections as from the posts. In any case, I applaud JM for keeping the comments and working so hard to set quality standards so that reading the comments can be a positive and enriching experience.
Bravo JM and Lisa! Thank you for your comment work.
Jonathan, hey its looks like there is a typo per #7 (I thought that there was another garbage truck operator who had killed a cyclist…until I saw it was referencing Brett’s death which was an October 22, 2007 story and not later in 2022.)
Yes thanks Todd. Fixed that typo.
Sometimes, a single topic generates more than one article. Each article then gets its own comments. Although harder to derive, I would be interested in seeing the top 10 topics by number of comments.
I say “harder to derive” because you would have to decide how much time passed between one article on a topic and the next for it to count as the same topic. Or do all the articles which mention homeless camping on bike paths, or all articles about overzealous police officers unfairly targeting cyclists, or all articles about encounters with obnoxious drivers, etc., each count as 1 topic? You would also have to decide how broad to make each topic. Do all obnoxious drivers count as 1 topic, or does each obnoxious driver count as a topic?