Picking the NYT Picks: Editorial Criteria and Automation in the Curation of Online News Comments

Journalists have a propensity to select online comments for publication according to editorial conceptions of quality content. This work considers various criteria for identifying quality user contributions for publication, evaluates how these criteria manifest in New York Times “Picks” comments, and operationalizes three such criteria computationally. Results indicate that many of the criteria enumerated from the literature do manifest in NYT “Picks” comments more so than nonselected comments, that most criteria are adequately rated by untrained non-professionals, and that relatively simple algorithms can be used to automatically assess some of these criteria. Implications for future online commenting experiences are discussed.