Rethinking the Conversation

Interactive spaces like online comment sections can be vitriolic, uncivil melees, but they’re also likely home to your most loyal readers. How can news orgs bring users’ valuable insights to light without being overwhelmed by rants and spam?

The Coral Project (http://coralproject.net/), a collaboration between Mozilla, The New York Times, and The Washington Post aims to help by creating open-source software and renewed best practices that any publisher could use to create, improve, and maintain interactive spaces.

Sydette Harry is the community lead of the project. She is an avid internet commenter on anywhere that will give her a password. She worked in cultural arts, tech and project curation, andher writing has been on Bitch.com, Salon, and The Toast.

Gabriela Rodriguez is one of the full-stack developers in the project. She is an activist and hacker who loves the intersection between media and technology. She co-founded the Uruguayan nonprofit DATA that works with open data and transparency in South America. She grew up in Uruguay and now lives in Portland, OR.