Over the past nine months, we’ve gotten plenty of feedback from our users about our article comments. From a confusing registration process to undefined character limits to posts not displaying, there’s plenty of room for improvement.
Because of your feedback, we’re working hard behind the scenes to completely overhaul our story comments. Eventually, our story comments will be completely different, with real profiles and a far more social experience.
The very first piece of this change begins late Thursday, and though many of the new features and changes will be behind the scenes, I thought you might be interested in what’s going on.
First things first: We’ve updated both our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service. Please review the new versions closely. If, for any reason, you’d prefer to opt-out of these changes, please e-mail us and we’ll suspend your account.
Now, on to the new stuff!
- Users can now use one username and password to log in to leave a comment on ALL of the sites in the Connecticut Media Group: CTPost.com, DarienNewsOnline.com, FairfieldCitizenOnline.com, GreenwichCitizen.com, GreenwichTime.com, NewCanaanNewsOnline.com, NewMilfordSpectrum.com, NewsTimes.com, NorwalkCitizenOnline.com, StamfordAdvocate.com and Westport-News.com
- The reverse is also true: If you register for any of our sites, you’ll now be able to log in to all of them.
Some things to keep in mind:
- You can’t register an email address or a username that has already been registered on another site
- If you’ve already used the same e-mail address or username across more than one of our sites, don’t worry. You can still use them for now. Sometime in the future, the duplicates will be removed and you may be asked to choose which username you want to keep.
it sounds like some updating has been a long time coming.let’s give it a chance
Comment by mike — June 24th, 2010 @ 2:16 pm
“Privacy” policy?
Newspeak at work. It is a naked data mining license.
Disclosure either under government pressure or Hearst’s independent decision?
The more I read the “privacy” policy the more I find to dislike. I’m out.
Comment by VoxPop — June 24th, 2010 @ 11:51 pm
Go back to topix
Comment by Topix — June 25th, 2010 @ 7:23 am
Sorry, that won’t be happening.
Comment by Keith Whamond — June 25th, 2010 @ 7:32 am
Thanks for your comment. News organizations frequently don’t use bylines in very short articles, which include your examples.
Comment by Keith Whamond — June 25th, 2010 @ 7:33 am
If you’d like to opt-out and suspend your account, please click the link above.
Comment by Keith Whamond — June 25th, 2010 @ 7:52 am
Glad to see registration will still be required. And glad you will not be going back to topix.
Comment by JE — June 25th, 2010 @ 8:27 am
That “privacy policy” is a deal breaker. Keith. Why would anyone be willing to give up that amount of personal information to the Hearst Corporation? You can have our IP’s and leave us cookies, but that’s where your reach should end.
The News Times needs it’s OWN forum, not yet another one that holds us hostage to the demands or ineptitude of yet another third party.
Comment by Jimmy Pursey — June 25th, 2010 @ 9:42 am
Hearst isn’t a third party, it’s the company that owns The News-Times. I agree that ideally we’d build our own commenting platform, but that’s a rare privilege these days. I think you’ll be happy with our new platform. I hope you give it a try when it goes live.
Comment by Keith Whamond — June 25th, 2010 @ 11:43 am
This is good news.
Comment by Don Carson — June 25th, 2010 @ 4:38 pm
Thank goodness you will be not be going back to Topix. That is the worse site on the internet. They allow thousands of people to be libeled everyday without accountability and then make money off of it. To have unmoderated forums for an alleged “newssite” is shocking and even the attorney generals are after that horrid company.
Comment by Bren — June 25th, 2010 @ 9:12 pm
You used to actually HAVE your own comments page. Why did you choose to disband it and go to these formats you’ve had over the past 2 years? All that has done is allow people to use multiple names and slander other posters without being punished for it.
Comment by Secondhand Rose — June 27th, 2010 @ 4:10 pm
Rose, thank you for your comment. We hope to bring back forums on our sites sometime in the future.
Comment by Keith Whamond — June 27th, 2010 @ 6:10 pm
Please moderate the forum. It has been wonderful to hear all the intelligent comments and sharing of ideas and perspectives to truly get at all sides of a story, but it has been used too much as a control tool for frustrated impotent jerks who get perverse satisfaction anonymously making people angry with racist remarks or whatever, they get in irrelevant arguments between each other off topic, and even make inflammatory comments on people who have died to hurt people. How do you feel about helping facilitate this anti-social behavior? Not deleting or checking comments before they are posted is what has destroyed the potential of the community forum both Topix and what replaced it, and nothing less is going to fix it.
Comment by Orion — June 27th, 2010 @ 10:40 pm
I agree with #8. Somehow other papers manage to have active comment sections without the onerous requirements you propose. The Seattle Times is one of the best in the nation in that respect. You could maybe learn from them how they do it. They have no more information about me than the above and from time to time I do comment there. I might add I have never had a comment removed anywhere for anything that I know of.
The plain vanilla (don’t step on any toes) reporting that is the Greenwich Time these days is a sad shadow of what it was in times past. By the way I have been a reader at times for about 60 years!! Nuff said, Good Luck!!
Comment by Idaho — June 28th, 2010 @ 12:27 am
Yes! I strongly second Orion’s plea for the NEWS-TIMES to moderate the forum. Regardless of which platform you use, who owns it, or how many sites it covers…you, the News-Times, MUST do your part and BE INVOLVED. Without that, any hardware or software changes or “improvements” are meaningless.
Comment by Bordeaux — June 28th, 2010 @ 8:09 am
Idaho and Bordeaux, one thing I want to make clear: We moderate our comments. If you see an offensive comment, please flag it as such immediately. A member of our team will delete the comment if it violates our terms of service. Thanks!
Comment by Keith Whamond — June 28th, 2010 @ 2:13 pm
Trying to better moderate the discussions makes sense, especially since the same people who violated your system when you used topix are continuing to do so. The privacy policy, however, should be named a non-privacy policy.
It would have been easier if you just said “we can give any information that we can derive from your use of our site to anyone we want, and if you aren’t computer savvy be aware that we can collect a lot more information than you suspect. By the way if you send an article to someone else we’ll share their information with the world too”.
On a helpful side, you really might want to fix your privacy policy to remove the [ANTHING ELSE?] left over from your review cycle. I’m not impressed that you post a (semi) legal document that you failed to proof, it makes me wonder what else might be incorrect.
Now, if I could just opt out from those annoying semi-papers you leave on my doorstep every week that lets people know when I’m not at home.
Comment by John Z — June 28th, 2010 @ 2:45 pm
why do you guys complain about privacy when you have already been bag and tagged by every web site you have already visited..if you want privacy just stay off the internet
Comment by george cingolani — June 28th, 2010 @ 9:23 pm
Keith,
That is why I am so thrilled you are no longer going to associate with Topix. That is the trashiest site on the internet. Anyone can go on and libel someone else. I have heard of people having to move to a different city because of death threats or their reputations ruined. Destroying someone’s reputation with lies is not what is meant by freedom of speech. Thank you for standing up to that company and site. I sincerely hope their forums are moderated or that company goes out of business altogether. They have sold their sold to the devil.
Comment by Susie — June 29th, 2010 @ 9:48 am
Thank you sir for getting rid of Topix. Cyberbullying is out of control in this country and that sick, sick company is making a profit off of it.
Comment by Michael — July 4th, 2010 @ 10:20 pm
George
Yes, I have complained to other sites, and I take precautions to block personal information. The reason for my statement was to make other people aware of the issues with the privacy issues here.
Most people will not take the time (and may not have the education) to understand the rather bloated privacy policies, and most lawyers seem unable or unwilling to development statements that are easy to read.
Keith, I just went to look at the privacy policy for an example of something and, well, it’s gone 404 as have most of the other links below.
Comment by John Z — July 30th, 2010 @ 4:12 pm
John Z, are you sure? You may be having an issue on your end. These pages are loading fine for me:
http://www.ctpost.com/privacy
http://www.ctpost.com/tos/
Comment by Keith Whamond — August 6th, 2010 @ 1:26 pm
CT Media Group, you are the best. Like the Hartford Courant and a growing list of companies, you realized that TOPIX had spun out of control. While unmoderated posts create practically unuseable forums, TOPIX is also profiting on their business model which in dozens of cases has destroyed reputations, caused harm to kids from serious cyberbullying, and propagated hate, racism, defamation and anti-semitism.
It’s not hard to come up with a blog platform that upholds basic ethical standards, so thanks for doing that.
Comment by Matt Walters — October 13th, 2010 @ 6:47 pm