Updated: Late Saturday night, we launched a new comments system here on My Ballard. If you’re like us, you’ve noticed the tone of My Ballard’s comments has gradually deteriorated over the last couple months. This has been a real concern for us, because we created My Ballard as a community-powered news source: a place for our neighbors to connect and openly share meaningful information about stories and issues that are important to them. The new system empowers you, the reader, to help improve the comment experience.
You don’t need to register to post a comment, but you do need to sign up if you want to “report” or “like” a comment. The more times a comment is reported, the more likely it will disappear. At the top of each comment thread, you’ll see a “sort by” option. If you select “best rating,” the comments that have been “liked” the most will appear at the top. “Popular now” ranks the comments that have been “liked” the most recently. Once you make a selection here, it will stick for the rest of the comments (but you can change it back, if you want).
Now, no commenting system is perfect, but we hope this is a step in the right direction. We ask that you please be patient over the next few days as we fine tune it, and let us know what you think below…
We will periodically check the list of “reported” comments that disappear to see if there's a systematic effort to quash meaningful conversation. If so, we'll override the system and reinstate those comments.
Also, if you register for comments here on My Ballard, you'll soon be able to use that same profile on our other neighborhood sites as well. (It's different from the forum, unfortunately, which has a second sign-in.)