Comments for Comments

“This feedback option is really of great value to readers because they have a forum to speak anonymously, or not, on issues affecting their daily business.”

Comments for comments—that’s the word on Insurance Journal Online (www.insurancejournal.com). So much so that comments for other readers’ comments have become a daily event for people tuned in to IJ Online.

So, what is a “reader comment” and how exactly are they used you ask?

The reader comment feature on IJ Online was developed as a way to encourage readers of daily news articles to interact with the article’s topic and with other readers of the Web site news. The comment feature allows any reader to post their opinions, thoughts, add additional information, post questions or respond to another reader’s comment.

The feature has become so popular that many readers even use the “reader comment” feature as a message board for communication to others, offering words of congratulations, contradiction and rhetoric. The use and value of this unique Web site feature has far exceeded its original intent. Every day, more and more readers are posting their personal views on IJ Online.

Readers of the daily news include individuals such as retail agents and brokers, agency support staff, managing general agents and brokers, wholesalers, insurance company executives, insurance attorneys, trial lawyers, trade group representatives and even the consumer world.

Since the reader comment feature was first implemented into IJ Online in February 2004 it has seen tremendous growth. The number of people reading and posting comments has grown by the thousands. Comment pages attracted 57,062 pages views in March, 109,759 in April, 116,584 in May, and in June, the feature generated 125,311 page views of comments posted on IJ daily news.

“There are a number of other news sites on the Internet that have similar reader comments,” Josh Carlson, IJ‘s Web manager, said. “I’m glad to see that our readers are using it.” Carlson added, “This feedback option is really of great value to readers because they have a forum to speak anonymously, or not, on issues affecting their daily business.”

Posting a comment is easy. Each daily news article published on IJ Online has an option at the end of the article that says, “Click here to post a comment.” Then readers simply fill out a form to include their name, e-mail address and message. The name can be “real” or “anonymous.” User e-mail addresses are not published publicly.

“I think anonymity plays an important role in creating participation,” Carlson said. “I think it is also implicit that such systems (i.e., user Web posts not requiring login information) are not always completely honest.”

This is one reason why the IJ editorial department continuously monitors user Web comments. While reader comments remain a public forum, IJ‘s editors will remove postings that contain obscene or derogatory language and/or advertisements for company products or services. However, 99.9 percent of posted reader comments are published on IJ Online without any editing whatsoever, including the sometimes very heated debates between readers of the site.

The back-and-forth debates between comment posters of the site have been a dynamic progression in and of themselves. After a couple of months, the rate at which many comment posters would “check back” to find out who responded to their comment, or to review what new comments had been posted, steadily increased. To provide greater ease-of-use for readers and users of the site, IJ Online added the choice to have “notification” sent to them via a personal e-mail each time a new reply is posted to the article in question.

In addition, the IJ editorial team decided some of the Web site user comments were so intriguing that a few select comments would be worthy of republishing in IJ‘s print magazine for the enjoyment of loyal readers who may not follow the daily Web site news.

In May 2004, IJ magazine launched a new monthly department titled “Web Mail,” that features the previous month’s best-of-the-best reader comments from the Web site. And on occasion, a reader Web comment is so exceptional that editors will feature the comment in greater detail as a “Letter to the Editor.” Therefore, each comment poster is asked for permission to reprint their “comment” in print. It is important to note that IJ will not reprint a reader comment without the expressed permission of the poster.

IJ Online will continue to strive for the best industry Web site in the world. We want the site to be as interactive and user-friendly as possible, not only for the valuable informational benefit of IJ editors, but most importantly for our readers and users of the site. We welcome your feedback and hope that you enjoy the enhancements we have made to the site. Until next time, stayed tuned for more “comments for comments.”

Andrea Ortega-Wells is the national editor of Insurance Journal. She can be reached at: (626) 792-5209 or by e-mail at: awells@insurancejournal.com.