Walker tells us that Yahoo News users demanded that the site add some sort of commenting system. “We sort of looked at our customer satisfaction research and some of the feedback from the audience was that the right to comment was sort of an extension of their first amendment rights,” he says. “There was a very strong desire from the audience—which is an engaged audience which has something to say—to interact with the news site at a much more profound level.”

Yahoo News had previously allowed its users to comment on news articles via message boards. But the company shut those down in late 2006 in part because of the poor quality of discussion. “The feeling as I understand it was that it was degrading the quality of the site rather than enhancing it,” says Mark Walker, who heads up Yahoo News in North America. This time around, Yahoo has added filtering technologies to its comment streams, in order to ensure that higher quality comments are highlighted. (Walker says there are seven levels of “technical comment moderation.”)

Walker tells us that Yahoo News users demanded that the site add some sort of commenting system. “We sort of looked at our customer satisfaction research and some of the feedback from the audience was that the right to comment was sort of an extension of their first amendment rights,” he says. “There was a very strong desire from the audience—which is an engaged audience which has something to say—to interact with the news site at a much more profound level.”

Yahoo News had previously allowed its users to comment on news articles via message boards. But the company shut those down in late 2006 in part because of the poor quality of discussion. “The feeling as I understand it was that it was degrading the quality of the site rather than enhancing it,” says Mark Walker, who heads up Yahoo News in North America. This time around, Yahoo has added filtering technologies to its comment streams, in order to ensure that higher quality comments are highlighted. (Walker says there are seven levels of “technical comment moderation.”)

Walker tells us that Yahoo News users demanded that the site add some sort of commenting system. “We sort of looked at our customer satisfaction research and some of the feedback from the audience was that the right to comment was sort of an extension of their first amendment rights,” he says. “There was a very strong desire from the audience—which is an engaged audience which has something to say—to interact with the news site at a much more profound level.”

Articles in Yahoo! News come from news services, namely Associated Press (AP), Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Fox News, Christian Science Monitor, NPR, USA Today, CNN.com, CBC News, Seven News, BBC News, and others.

Yahoo! allowed comments for each news article up until December 19, 2006, when commentary was disabled. Comments were enabled once again on March 2, 2010.[1]