Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet announced today that they’re making some changes(Google translation) to their comment system. Two changes primarily. The first change I understand, they want to lessen anonymity by making commenters registered with their full name and a picture rank higher in the article comments. That sounds logical, less anonymous users probably means a lot less headache for the newspaper in trying to sort out the chaff, trolls and spam.

The second change leaves me rather baffled. They’re introducing micropayments for comments. When I read the ingress I thought it meant they’re going to pay users for comments. They’re not. Users have to pay them 5 kr (roughly 1 USD) a month to comment. A symbolic sum for sure, but isn’t there something oddly wrong there? I understand newspapers are exploring new paths of making money as the old paths close up, but to me the value of the comment system is quite evenly shared between the commenters and the newspaper.

The commenters get a place to vent, get visibility for their blogs if they link to it, and get a social arena to participate in.

The newspaper on the other hand, gets free content, and probably also gains a bit more traffic as people who are likely to comment on articles probably go back to articles several times, increasing ad views.

That’s why it strikes me as a bit odd that commenters now have to pay to participate. Is it just me?