Thursday Things: The Pointy Haired Boss Blogs, and the Comment Conundrum

Hi folks -- there are a higher-than-usual number of little ones underfoot, so today must be Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. (With the impending approach of summer intern season, though, it can be hard to tell sometimes.)

In other Thursday news:

* Take a look at today's Dilbert -- looks like the Pointy-Haired Boss is venturing into corporate blogging. (In his own special way.)

I'm interested to see how this storyline plays out.

* The AP has a story entitled, Newspapers Debate Online Reader Comments -- it wraps up some of the recent experiences that newspapers have run into with comments on their Web sites.

Each Web site will have its own philosophy and pain threshhold as it tries to balance the desire to have open forums of communication, with the need to weed out trolls and obscenity.

As I've said many times before, things are kind of different with high-traffic Web sites, since it brings out idiots who just want to get on stage and spew in front of a lot of people.

Plus, with high-traffic items, trying to maintain a civil and useful discussion can be a real bear -- for example, the folks over at AOL Newsbloggers posted the Virginia Tech shooter's plays on April 17th. Ten days later, they're up to 10,207 comments (at 15 comments per page, that's 681 pages), the bulk of those posted in the first few days.

Human nature being what it is, you can't just look for technical solutions -- it takes a human touch to figure out what kind of discourse you want to have, then enforce it.

You can see one kind of approach -- public shaming -- over at the Wired News Danger Room blog, where blogger Noah Shachtman publicly calls out a sock puppet commenter (a person who posts under multiple identities).

While I'm sure it's a viscerally satisfying experience, it really doesn't scale well. (And of course, some people just have no shame.)

* Finally for now, the New York Times Tech section has an article on software and professional services for retouching photos (NYT link, but you should be able to see it without registering). You can hire photo experts to hide zits, straighten noses, and repairing tears and blotches in old photos -- but be prepared to pay.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: dilbert, commenting, danger room, sock puppets, photo retouching