California Watch offers free iPods to best commenters

Posted by Alexandra Jaffe on March 15, 2010 at 3:53 PM

Nonprofit investigative news website California Watch is aiming to boost reader participation by offering a free iPod touch to its best commenters each month over the next six.

California Watch follows in the well-tread footsteps of small blogs across the internet hoping to boost their readership and strengthen their online community.

While some sites, like Scienceblogs.org, require users simply to comment to be entered into their contests, California Watch requires its winning commenters to be "thoughtful, focused, and articulate in making your argument."

This requirement may help the website avoid comment threads becoming what John C. Dvorak of PCMag.com calls "an unread mess of nothingness."

Dvorak, like many readers and posters of online comments, is concerned about the relevance of comment threads that may go on for pages without adding anything to the discussion.

"At what point do these threads become a useless dialectic?" he asks.

California Watch seems to believe that the prospect of a free iPod will be enough to spur their readership to post higher quality comments. The winners will tell if any incentive is enough to prevent comment threads from unraveling, as they so often do, into confusion.

Sources: California Watch, Scienceblogs.org, PCMag.com.