The Impact of Featuring Comments in Online Discussions

TL;DR

This study examines how featuring comments on news platforms influences discussion quality and user engagement, finding limited impact on quality but increased activity after comments are featured.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of discussions with and without featured comments, highlighting the effects on engagement and discussion quality.

Findings

Limited improvement in discussion quality due to featuring comments

Increased user activity following the highlighting of comments

Moderation strategies may primarily boost engagement rather than quality

Abstract

A widespread moderation strategy by online news platforms is to feature what the platform deems high quality comments, usually called editor picks or featured comments. In this paper, we compare online discussions of news articles in which certain comments are featured, versus discussions in which no comments are featured. We measure the impact of featuring comments on the discussion, by estimating and comparing the quality of discussions from the perspective of the user base and the platform itself. Our analysis shows that the impact on discussion quality is limited. However, we do observe an increase in discussion activity after the first comments are featured by moderators, suggesting that the moderation strategy might be used to increase user engagement and to postpone the natural decline in user activity over time.