It appears that the Sun Chronicle, which appears to be based in Massachusetts, has chosen to go to a pretty extreme position. Reader Shawn alerts us that The Sun Chronicle disabled their comment system a few months back, after it got upset about a few anonymous readers “disrupting” things.
Shawn says “When the comments went away I found myself spending less time on the site but didnt care enough to complain.” However, he recently went back and was surprised that, in order to comment you need to hand over your credit card, and the paper will charge you $0.99.
Obviously, this is more to prove that you are who you say you are, but it does seem a bit distorted when the newspaper wants to charge people just to comment. Also, once charged, your name and hometown are automatically associated with your comments.
It’s funny, but I sometimes I wish my readers would comment more, but then again, I’m the same person that gets frustrated at the people that leave comments on news websites because those comments seem so bat-s crazy.
"It’s funny, but I sometimes I wish my readers would comment more".
Why not be creative. Based on the Sun Chronicle's position, you could pay your readers for their comments. It would be a nice part-time gig for me. And I can assure you every comment would quality stuff
Dan – I think it would only be fair for Geeding to pay us for adding in the proper helping verbs from time to time… 😉
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I think the Sun Chronicle won't be around for very much longer, in print or electronic format. With that kind of publicity, who needs paid-for comments to kill a newspaper? This'll do it much faster.
I caught you a delicious bass.