One phenomenon is newspapers having online comment sections. The Victoria Times Colonist had to change its approach to that:
http://www.timescolonist.com/Changes+st ... story.htmlBlack Press found that out earlier, and the comment sections of the Seattle PI’s article pages still suffer from silliness (wild claims about one brand versus another, for example – a sensible person has to wade through much nonsense to get value from the feature).
But registration must be done well (I gave up on Canwest).
Advertising bots must be blocked (the purpose of the perennially poor entry characters on the Seattle PI’s pages).
The cost of moderation must be borne, persons familiar with the Compuserve forums from past decades know that – and that moderation can become its own vested interest by a clique or tyrant. I don’t recommend copying the competition in general, but learning from their mistakes may be a Very Good Idea.