Engadget shuts down comments: Got a better solution?

February 5 2010, 9:27am

The web magazine covering everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics, Engadget, turned off its commenting feature this past Tuesday due to an influx of trolls and spammers leaving ugly, pointless and sometimes threatening messages. The change occurred after the site began extensive coverage of Apple’s iPad, which attracted an entirely new audience base that is apparently a lot more vocal than the site’s average reader. “We have a huge readership, but the vast majority of our readers do not comment,” said Joshua Topolsky, Engadget editor in chief. “But we’ve had an influx of new readers due to our iPad coverage last week, which blew away our previous [traffic] expectations. Topolsky said that trolls are coming to the site to incite arguments and that their comments often go off-topic or become racist or sexist just to be inflammatory. Engadget editors are able to delete such comments, but have drawn the line when their community members and editors are being personally attacked. While some speculate as to Engadget’s relationship with Apple - due to the positive coverage, the company insists that this nor advertiser pressure played into its decision to shut down commenting. Previous Engadget editor, Peter Rojas also disabled comments in 2005 for similar reasons. In both instances Engadget has said comments would resume when things cooled down. Shutting down comments is not the most ’social’ thing to do, nor does it make for a particularly engaging community. Spam is a part of the reality of online publishing and I have to say, I am utterly confused by this action as it seems to defeat the purpose of conversation. “I’m not trying to send them to another site, I’m trying to diminish their interest,” said Topolsky. “I’m hoping they’ll get bored and decide to stop commenting.”