reader-comments-analyzer

Reader Comments Analyzer

What This Skill Does

Reads a batch of reader comments and produces a structured summary of recurring themes, unanswered questions, emotional tone, and actionable editorial signals — so editors and journalists can understand what their audience actually took from a piece.

When To Use This Skill

• After publishing a story that generated significant reader response and you want to understand what landed and what did not
• When deciding whether to follow up on a story based on what readers are asking
• When a piece attracted hostile or polarised comments and you need to understand the pattern before responding
• When commissioning a follow-up or correction and you want to prioritise the issues readers flagged most often
• When an editor wants an audience intelligence report without reading hundreds of individual comments

What You Need To Provide

Required:

• A batch of reader comments (paste them directly — a minimum of 10 is useful; 30 or more gives more reliable patterns)
• The headline or a one-sentence description of the original article (so the assistant can assess relevance and gap between article intent and reader response)

Optional:

• The platform the comments came from (website, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, etc.) — tone and conventions differ by platform
• Any specific question you want answered (e.g., "What are readers most angry about?" or "What follow-up story ideas are hidden in these comments?")
• Whether you want the analysis to inform a correction, a follow-up article, or a community response

How the Assistant Approaches This

1. Reads through all comments and identifies recurring subjects, questions, and emotional registers — grouping similar responses together without losing important outliers
2. Assesses the overall tone distribution: what proportion of comments are broadly positive, critical, questioning, hostile, or off-topic
3. Extracts the three to five strongest editorial signals: specific factual challenges, gaps the article did not address, misunderstandings the headline or framing may have caused, and story ideas the audience is explicitly requesting
4. Flags any comments that suggest a correction may be warranted — factual disputes supported by named sources, direct corrections from people with apparent expertise, or errors the publication has not yet acknowledged
5. Summarises findings in a format ready to share with an editorial meeting