How not to deal with commenters

I had an interesting though short Twitter conversation with a former student last night. In the interest of not embarrassing her or her employers, I’m going to keep her name out of this; I’ll just call her “@student.” She works at a midsize paper in Texas, and frequently posts frustrations with the commenters the site attracts.

Here’s the conversation from last night:

student: We disabled comments on a story about a suicide because commenters gave an incorrect ID on the victim. You can bet they’re up in arms.

robweir: did you tell them that’s why you did it?

student: We don’t reply to commenters. The (redacted) are real big about precedent: If we do it now we have to do it again.

robweir: What? No. They are people who spend a significant amount of time on your site and deserve an explanation.

I could leave it at that, but this bears repeating: People who visit your site and post comments are attempting to engage you in conversation. If you don’t engage, the only way you can direct the conversation is by nuking comments. That’s not a very effective way to manage any conversation — it would be better to simply not allow any comments at all. On the other hand, if you engage, you can set social norms, direct and steer the conversation, and give people what they want, which is attention and a forum to discuss things.

Just to be clear, I’m not criticizing the student in question. I think she’s following the line of her corporate masters here. But it’s the wrong line.