AI moderation gives My Edmonds News a way to reopen comments — with humans still in the loop
Cartoon · AI-generated
The Washington community newsroom says AI has cut comment-moderation work to about an hour a day, but clear rules and staff oversight remain essential.
My Edmonds News, a Washington-based community newsroom, has been experimenting with artificial intelligence to keep its comment section open while reducing the burden on staff. The project, covered by the Reynolds Journalism Institute, reflects a wider reversal in digital publishing: after years in which many outlets shut comments down because of abuse, some newsrooms are now bringing them back as a way to deepen audience engagement and support revenue.
In the trial, the newsroom compared several moderation products before settling on OpenModeration, which it liked for its customisable rules, relative affordability and responsive support. The experiment was not just about software selection. It also forced editors to examine what they actually wanted the comment area to be, and to define in practical terms the behaviour that should be encouraged, tolerated or rejected.
The outlet began with a mixed system in which the tool could approve straightforward comments while escalating borderline cases to a human reviewer. According to OpenModeration’s own documentation, the service is designed to analyse comments against a community’s rules, route uncertain items for human review and allow moderators to override decisions in a console. My Edmonds News then translated its own community standards into more detailed instructions, refining them to cover personal attacks, first-time contributors and criticism of politicians or policies.
That process also highlighted the limits of automation. The newsroom found that a general set of community guidelines was not specific enough for the system to apply consistently, while local context and cultural nuance remained difficult for the software to judge. WordPress documentation explains that integrations often rely on application passwords, which are distinct credentials created for external services; My Edmonds News had to generate those credentials before the connection worked. The outlet also ran into technical friction when its anti-scraping protections initially blocked access, before staff from both sides worked through the issue.
Despite the early complications, the newsroom says the pilot has cut moderation time to about 45 minutes to an hour a day. It has also prompted more transparent conversations with readers, some of whom offered feedback and adjusted rejected comments so they better matched the rules. My Edmonds News’ existing commenting policy already asks participants to use their real names and follow its code of conduct, and the experiment suggests that clear standards, regular staff oversight and reader participation matter as much as the technology itself. Even so, the newsroom has not treated the tool as a complete solution, but rather as one part of a broader effort to make public discussion more constructive.
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Source: Noah Wire Services · Original