Does Conversation Scale?

> “So I’m going to be honest with you and I’ve said this before and I’ve upset some people. I don’t read the comments anything like as much as I used to because there is too much static white noise in them and not enough pure feedback. But if we could find a way of having a more thoughtful, less abusive debate via blogs I think that would be a good thing.”

He’s not alone in this observation – many big, high traffic blogs have abandoned comments, employed moderators, or left their comments as a bear pit, because one to many conversation doesn’t scale very well. Forums have been dying under the weight of moderation problems since before blogs were first published.

This is a challenge for mainstream media companies as social media becomes a more central part of what we do, and not just a fringe activity (in fact, I’m in the process of arranging a meeting with one of our titles that is going through the early stages of this issue).

What’s the solution? Community managers? User voting? Enforced registration?