They also create a model for the proper behavior by being adopting a civil tone and by responding to the people who have made valid contributions. If you think that a good comment will get noticed you are encourage to be good.

Personally I think comments are of great value but I have spent the last couple of years focusing on Social Q&A where the community can ask the questions that matter to them and the community can provide their opinions. This moves them out of the ranks of the footnote altogether and creates a community where people can get a reputation.

To answer the first question, I think reasonable and thoughtful readers definitely stay away from the comments because they too often descend into mud-wrestling with idiots. The only way to make comments more appealing, I think, is to be diligent in removing outright offensive comments, and to actively respond to those intelligent comments that do get posted — which creates an incentive for others.

I agree that there are legal and ethical issues involved — in fact, the first of these is the main reason why we close comments on stories that involve legal cases, crimes and stories that might lead to slanderous or libelous comments.

Do you think, though, that reasonable, insightful readers stay away from the comment forums when the conversation sinks into abuse and offense? I want those readers in the conversation; we need them. They could steer the conversation back to civility and confront intolerance. But I sense they want no part of something they deem unseemly and unruly.

And how should we handle personal attacks? I’m thinking of a sad case here in Iowa when a middle-schooler died of a prescription drug overdose at a “pharm” party. Some Des Moines Register readers posted vitriolic comments disparaging the boy’s mother, by name, accusing her of awful things and blaming her for her son’s death. The comments were later removed, but were up for several hours.

Generally, I’m in favor of the free-for-all, but cases like that one give me pause. I think we’re on shaky ground legally and ethically in such a situation.

Journalism, music, film, advertising, television have reached a very high level of professionalism through obsessive control, scrubbing out every flaw for perfection. An image of an operating room comes to mind, right down to the anesthetized patient.

However, as we all know this “clinical” style does not fit with today’s market. Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC says, “who doesn’t want to just sit there but to take part, debate, create, communicate, share.”

Media professionals must feel like a surgeon being asked to operate with the patient awake, complete with responding to the patient’s questions and input during the surgical procedure.

To change the game, think about how the internet’s advantages of real time interactivity may add value to both the journalist and audience. Here’s an example. A news story breaks on the radio, cable tv and on search engines. Most of these stories aren’t black and white. They are complicated. The audience has a wide variation of pre-existing knowledge.

But the journalist has a core audience, inherently representative of a significant percentage of the journalist’s audience, who want camaraderie with the journalist. They have the potential to help a journalist develop a community.

Currently when news breaks, a journalist researches and writes in a vacuum and hopes their readers will “get it” and pass it on. By tapping core readers’ understanding and questions, a journalist can start to the build the story from the perspective of what the audience is most curious about. And instead of writing one comprehensive story. The story may unfold in segments, with core audience responses helping the journalist guide the way the story builds.

We know that certain stories will draw offensive or abusive comments — the Middle East, abortion, etc. — but at the same time those are some of the issues that people feel strongly about, and deserve to be allowed to discuss.

But (and I have this argument at work all the time) if we close comments on contentious stories because we’re afraid of offensive speech, then we will only have comments on innocuous stories — which then raises the question of why we are bothering in the first place.