Journalists and media have long been accused of being disconnected from people. With terms like "media elite" and "living in ivory towers," readers sometimes voiced their discontent via letters in the past. As newspapers gained a foothold on the Internet so came the partial disillusionment of this gap between journalists and readers. Nowadays, many news websites feature comment sections under the articles they publish.

Comment sections have two immediate, positive effects. One is instant feedback. By being able to question, criticize or praise, readers can voice their opinions of the newspaper's conduct. Letters might get lost or ignored by a newspaper with none the wiser, but comments are a bit different. Sure enough, editors can delete comments that criticize, but with social media readers have a much easier way to expose censure.

The second benefit of comment sections is that they give readers a voice in the discussion. Even by allocating them a small part, newspapers can now allow readers to be part of the news conversation, and there are many cases of retractions or edits in news articles because a reader offered better information in the comments.

Of course, editors and reporters might be a little bit more careful with fact checking if they know that they can be called out by readers' comments.

Currently, the Daily Sabah website does not feature a comment section. With our chief ombudsman İbrahim Altay, we believe the addition of a comment section would be beneficial to the newspaper. Of course a hastily drawn up feature might do more harm than good.

Let me elaborate on the word hastily. Implementing a comment section also requires very efficient editorship. Comments filled with hate speech, insults and racism must be culled from the rest prior to their publication. After all, these comments have the potential to reach the masses as websites do, and by allowing individuals to spread hate and terror speech, we would be implicit in their crime, if not legally, then ethically. There are several ways to ensure that the system works. Some news websites do this by implementing a third-party identification process and stripping the shield of anonymity. Some withhold comments until an editor properly goes through them. Of course, there are many bad examples as well. Some newspapers allow free rein in their comment section, and sure enough, comment battles always ensue on controversial articles. The reasoning behind this tactic might be the prospect of gaining increased traffic on their website, albeit at the expense of a newspaper's respectability and credibility.

Our website is also preparing to revamp its gallery section. A strong gallery feature might be just what we need to thoroughly understand that photographs are news on their own and must be treated as such, as long as these sections do not turn into clickbait like the many bad examples. Nevertheless, we are eagerly awaiting its launch.

Lastly, we have been getting an increased number of requests of a dictionary function on the Daily Sabah website from readers who are not fluent in English. As far as I know right now, this feature is not a priority as the development team is working with the new gallery section, but I have relayed the requests. I can, however, suggest again that until a dictionary feature can be added our readers can use add on programs in major browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox in order solve their difficulties.