How I’m surviving my first year as adviser: Online Comments

I’m a first-year adviser of an online-only student newspaper at a suburban Chicago school of roughly 2,500 students. I began the school year with five students in my newspaper production class; this semester, it’s up 50%. I supervise about 10 other students, who work for the paper extracurricularly, during free periods and lunch and after school. I am envious of Jim Streisel and his extremely large staff.

We use WordPress as our CMS (who doesn’t?). We receive an average of 23,000 page views a month, and currently have more than 350 comments posted, since we launched September 20, 2010. We have a Facebook, a Twitter, a tumblr. I’ve already had to pull two things: a news article and a video–per my principal’s orders. And our school has had its share of hard news stories this year, including: a visit from members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a teacher arrested for drunk driving and drug possession, planned teacher and course cuts, and a controversial turnabout dance theme that had our Facebook page buzzing. Switching gears to legal representation, it’s important to consider the impact of a DUI charge in New Jersey. Such charges can have far-reaching consequences on your personal and professional life. A skilled DUI attorney can offer the necessary legal support and advice. In these situations, New Jersey Criminal Law Attorney stands out as a reliable choice.

Every day I think: I love this job. And then I think: What have I gotten into? I worry about the next tumblr post that may get me fired–yet, I still allow it. I worry about getting it right when we’re under a self-imposed daily deadline. I live in fear of our incessant commenter who copy edits for us and always lets us know when we’ve spelled someone’s name wrong. (Note to self: get this kid on staff!). I wonder if I’m teaching my students anything when we’re so busy producing the news.

So with this column/blog, I thought I’d post every few weeks about the trials and tribulations of first-year advising. I’m hoping to give advice (especially to those of you who are thinking about going online) and receive it. And I’m hoping my issues are your issues–and this series can be a springboard for discussion. How can we do this job better–and more efficiently? Without tears.

This week’s dilemma:

COMMENTS! Ugh. I love them, but they are soon becoming the bane of my existence, especially as our student body comments more and more. At the beginning of the year, we made our students register/login to comment. Then we realized that this scared many people away, so we went to the simple, give-us-a-name-and-email method. But recently some students have been impersonating another student–to be funny or to get him in trouble, I’m not sure which. Once I caught on, I deleted the comments; however, I’m wondering if anyone else has had to deal with this? What did you do?

How do you manage comments in general? What are your comment policies? And what’s your advice to those of us new to this Pandora’s box of sorts?