Via mediabistro.com, washingtonpost.com and other sites, we see that Google plans to roll out a new comments feature on its main page news articles. It allows those covered in a story to submit comments, which will be featured next to the article.

The Google News Blog states, "We're excited about the possibilities of this new feature and we hope you are too, so if you've been covered in a news article please send us your comments and we'll work with you to post it on Google News."

At first glance this seemed like a pretty neat use of an in-line comments feature for an online news community.

Disclaimer: In-line comments are not my first choice of community experience for News Communities, though I do see them as an additional feature that can be used. More on that in another entry.

Though commenting can be a community offering, Google is not providing one, because users can't participate in the conversation. They can only read what Google publishes and what the parties concerned say about what was published... that is, if we see all the comments. Still, allowing the subjects of stories to comment does add value to the user experience.

A closer look reveals this to be an online version of 'Letters to the Editor' with which we're familiar in print journalism and other media. People mentioned or affected by a story can write to the outlet to counter or commend the article and the editors decide what gets published. We all know a lot of Letters to the Editor never hit the page.

I wondered whether Google was going to set guidelines around submissions, so I followed the Send Us Your Comments link and read through the FAQs. There one sees that the News team at Google provides the following statement:

"We may not be able to respond to or publish all comments submitted but we'll try to be in touch with you and we may include your comments in future stories in which you are mentioned."

Kind of broad... am I the only one wondering what guidelines will be used to determine what comments make it through? Stating how they plan to choose which comments get published and some examples of which ones won't, would enhance the user experience. It would also help those submitting comments be more successful in having their's published.

What do you think about Google's new feature? Should all online News outlets allow subjects to submit their side of the story? Should users be able to comment, too? What do you think of comments in general?