By Larry Felton Johnson
A few years ago we turned off comments under the articles here, then later changed our mind and turned them on again. Now we’re going through that loop again, but providing readers with a better option for expressing their views.
Here are our reasons for turning them off:
- By far the largest engagement and replies to our articles occur on Facebook. For local articles our Facebook groups are where people engage with us (or sometimes yell at us). For articles we run that are licensed from other sources our main Facebook page is how people comment (I’ll tell you how to get to both of those in the section below this list
- Since we don’t get a lot of replies to the average article, we don’t check the comment queue very often, which results in a commenter often waiting days before their comment is posted. It’s rude to the commenter, and embarrassing for us
- Comments don’t get the sort of back-and-forth that people get from social media
- For all the problems of dealing with Facebook (and there are many) the moderation tools and alerts are pretty good, and we know almost immediately when someone replies to an article or post.
So what should you do if you want to comment on an article?
Most of our local articles get promoted on the Cobb County Courier Facebook group, which you can join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/2113993275510315/
If the post is about a city or other place in Cobb County, and you would like to respond and be read by people who live there (rather than a general Cobb County audience), here are some more targeted groups that we have:
Acworth News and Discussion group
Austell News and Discussion group
Kennesaw News and Discussion group
Mableton News and Discussion group
Marietta News and Discussion group
Powder Springs News and Discussion group
Smyrna Georgia News and Discussion group
If the article is one of the articles we run under license from national or state news organizations, go to our main Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/cobbcourier to comment or reply.
We value comments and input from our readers
Turning off comments here doesn’t mean that we don’t value your input. In fact, we’re doing it so your comments are likelier to be read and discussed. News site comment sections, except for the largest organizations, are largely dead zones.
Facebook, for all its problems, is anything but dead. So be sure and join us there to take part in the discussions.