Letters to the editor: yes!
Posted Jun 28, 2002 22:35 UTC (Fri) by
giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to:
Letters to the editor by tompoe
Parent article:
Letters to the editor
(This comment is on the orignal article, not the comment to whichit is
attached -- I could not figure out how to attach a comment to the
original).
I'm glad you brought up the letters vs comments issue because I've been
rather concerned about it. It has not been clear to me whether the
editor still welcomed letters. If you intend to have a letters section,
you should make that clear in every edition, and you might also clarify
what you see as the difference between a letter and a comment.
Comments don't work for me, because I see only the comments from people
who read the issue before me, and only the people who read after me see
mine.
I write a letter to the editor when I see something in an article or letter
that is in error or an important viewpoint is omitted. If roughly the
same people who saw the original won't see my response, there's no point
in my writing.
Comments can actually provide the editor with a valuable tool to improve the
letters section. If you make the letters section an editorial selection
from among the comments, then you 1) get more letters, and 2) make more
efficient use of your readers' time by sorting out redundant or
ingermane comments or overly long ones, all the while not having to worry
about stomping on other peoples' expression, because the comments are still
there for everyone to see.
I'd like to see a checkbox on the comment form for "OK to publish" and in
that case also a place to enter more formal identification of the author.
By the way, as the system stands, it is much easier for me to send an
email than to comment via the web. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but
I always have to click twice to see any comments (once to
get another copy of the article, with comment links a the bottom, and
then again for each comment -- quite slow). I have to log in before I
can post a comment, and then go back to the home page and navigate back
to where I was, and often there is no "post a comment" link or the link
is broken. As you can see from the opening of this comment, I was unable
to figure out after much trying how to post this comment properly.
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