WASHINGTON, D.C. July 12 (DPI) – The New York Times web site comment boards remain the best managed and most informative among all news site boards, according to a 2013 review and ranking of reader message boards by Digital Press International.
Reddit.com, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com), and HuffingtonPost.com all have active comment boards, but none come close to the managed quality and consistency of content appearing on The Times site’s comment boards, according to the DPI review.
A New York Times spokeswoman said all NYTimes.com comment boards and submissions are actively monitored – by people – to ensure that comments remain on-topic and free of personal attacks.
Reddit and Huffington Post have more readers than NYTimes.com but those sites’ comment boards are relatively freewheeling, and personal attacks and hostile exchanges are common.
WashingtonPost.com maintains comment boards that are largely unsupervised, and racist rants and incendiary remarks are common.
The Times in recent month has encouraged posters to identify themselves, but with little success so far. Most comments remain anonymously sourced.
In terms of site traffic, Comscore continues to rank Google sites, Yahoo sites, Microsoft sites, Facebook and AOL as the top five in terms unique monthly visits.