Pictures of the Day: Democratic Republic of Congo

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Photos from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, the West Bank and India.

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Perfectly Reasonable Question No. 5: On Comment ‘Picks’

Each weekday, about 10,000 comments from readers come to The Times’s Web site. Not all are published but of those that are, some â€" perhaps 10 percent - are awarded a beribboned notation called an “NYT Pick.”

Those picks have the aura of a gold star awarded by the teacher and are no doubt gratifying to the writers receiving them, but they sometimes cause disagreement among other readers.

One who wrote to me about this recently was Lauren O’Connell of Ithaca, N.Y., who objected to the recognition given to a comment on an editorial about the next Federal Reserve chairman. The comment said, in part: “I don’t think that this is a women’s job. And the reason is that to inspire confidence there is a certain degree of virility required.” It went on to suggest Paul Krugman, a Times columnist and economics professor, for the role.

Ms. O’Connell wrote that she found the choice to specially acknowledge this comment “alarming and offensive.”

I have long wondered who “picks” the Times Picks, and based on what criteria, and this one was just egregious enough for me to seek out the public editor. Is The Times agreeing, via its “pick,” with the notion that the Fed chairmanship is not “a woman’s job” and requires “virility”? Perhaps the paper is agreeing with the suggestion of Krugman for the job, but to “pick” this misogynistic post is very un-Times, it seems to me.

I talked with Bassey Etim, who as The Times’s community manager, oversees commenting. He agreed that this “pick” was not chosen well, since it seems to endorse a sexist point of view.

“Picking that may have been a mistake,” Mr. Etim told me on Thursday. “There are mistakes on NYT picks.”

He said, however, that the choice of a comment as a “pick” is not intended to show agreement with the message. The picks are chosen to “give a range of interesting or thoughtful perspectives - kind of a Cliffs Notes version of the whole discussion that is taking place” within the comments on that article. That explanation will be added to the FAQs by the end of this week, he said, and it’s been an oversight not to have it there previously, he said.

Sometimes, the picks can be used for a specific purpose. For example, to highlight location â€" on an article about Brazil, the picks might be given to commenters from Brazil, he said.

The picks are made by a staff of about 13 mostly part-time moderators, all of whom are journalists, he said, and reviewed by a supervisor to make sure that “there is a good mix of views.”

“But they are not endorsements,” he said. Times bloggers usually do not rely on the moderation staff but do their own comment moderation and choose their own picks.

“Picks can cause consternation but I think they serve the reader because they highlight a range of opinion,” Mr. Etim said. “We favor literate, smart, insightful comments, and those that address an opposite or minority point of view.” Witty comments also are good candidates for the recognition, he said.

Like the reader, Ms. O’Connell, I’ve been puzzled by some of the choices I’ve seen, and always assumed a pick was, in some sense, an endorsement of the content.

For what it’s worth, the public editor’s office, though it once employed the “picks” system on blog posts and columns, doesn’t do so now since it seems contrary to our role of representing all Times readers. We do read the comments carefully, and appreciate those who take the time to write.

This week I answered questions from Times readers. On Wednesday I wrote about the use of direct quotations and about identifying writers of letters to the editor. On Thursday I took up Web links and vulgarity as well a question about the use of brand names in Times articles.

And with that, I head off the grid for a vacation. I will be back in about 10 days.

A Monday, or Any Day, in Kabul

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When she set out to take portraits in Kabul, Afghanistan, Marieke van der Velden started with a simple question: What is your favorite place in your city?

A question doesn’t have to be complicated to yield a revealing response. The result of Ms. van der Velden’s visit, “A Monday in Kabul,” is a vibrant portrait of a place so often represented by photos of aftermath â€" the shattered landscape of explosions and suicide attacks. When news comes out of Afghanistan, Ms. van der Velden wants us to remember those who live with the story.

And how they live.

Two years ago, she traveled to Baghdad to shoot daily life and portraits of Iraqis. Her project, “Baghdad Today,” was what Michael Kamber called “one of the most intimate portraits of Iraqi life to emerge since the 2003 American invasion.” On that trip, she grounded her photographs in another basic question: How are you doing?

Marieke van der Velden “My name is Nafisa (second from left), I’m a TV presenter at Shamzad TV. This is one of the 43 commercial TV stations in Afghanistan. With my colleagues I make a children’•s program where kids can ask questions such as ‘Â"How do you become president?’ The director wants more women working in media and we feel safe here. But out on the streets safety is still an issue; the nature of our work makes us a target for attacks.” Favorite place: the garden at Shamzad TV.

Ms. van der Velden, 38, lives in the Netherlands. She first visited Kabul in 2005 for about 10 days, when she photographed a story about girls’ education for Unicef. What she found was much different than what she was used to seeing in the news media. She wanted to learn more.

She returned in March of this year with her boyfriend, Philip Brink, whom she called husband while there. They spent about three weeks in the city with the help of a grant from Sem Presser Archive, a Dutch organization. This time, recalling how rushed her previous interviews in Kabul had been, she was determined to learn more about the people she photographed.

But in preparing for the trip, she was troubled by the simplicity of her question. Friends thought it was a bad idea. People are suffering in Afghanistan, they told her. They might not want to talk about such mundane things.

She had similar fears before her trip to Baghdad. “I was very afraid that it sounded too naïve to go to a country in conflict and ask that question.”

But when she asked some Afghans living in the Netherlands what they thought about her trip, they were enthusiastic and shared contact information for relatives in Kabul.

“I thought: In Kabul, I will ask a new question, and I will ask a question where you can give any answer,” she said. Ms. van der Velden expected that while some answers would be enlightening, other people would be less open.

“And that is O.K. for me,” she said.

Answers varied, many likely influenced by the places the team visited. People told her they love the city zoo. They love the mountains behind Darul Aman Palace. They love Qargha Lake, outside of Kabul, where families ride a yellow Ferris wheel and men rent horses to ride along the beach. They love the swimming pool at the Intercontinental Hotel, where only men are allowed to visit. They love the land mine museum. They love their homes.

“I even love the dust of Kabul,” a woman named Roshan said. “This is where my heart is.”

Marieke van der Velden “My name is Nilofar. When I was 2 years old, a Taliban rocket hit our house. I got a piece of shrapnel in my back that damaged my nervous system. That’s why I’m in a wheelchair. Six years ago Afghanistan started an official wheelchair basketball team for women, I am one of them. In addition to law school I also train a lot. Â'As a woman, I have rights, absolutely. My mother taught me that those rights are not given though â€" you have to go out and get them yourself.” Favorite place: the basketball training center.

When it came to finding subjects, she improvised. First, Ms. van der Velden and her team â€" Mr. Brink, who filmed the trip; their translator, Najibullah; and their driver, Zarif â€" went to some places that had been widely seen in the news media. While she wanted to avoid those stories, the visits led to introductions.

Najibullah took them to places he thought might top people’s lists, like the zoo. Sometimes, they came across people on the streets. In a video Mr. Brink produced about the project, they chased down a woman who is behind the wheel of a red car.

“We just saw her drive by, calling behind the wheel, chaotically overtaking on the roundabout,” Ms. van der Velden explains in a voice-over, in Dutch.

Najibullah calls out to the woman from the passenger-seat window. She responds, nods and pulls over.

“That’s how we make our appointments, honey,” Ms. van der Velden says to Mr. Brink.

The woman, Shakila, turned out to be a mother of 10 who runs a driving school with her husband. Her favorite place in Kabul, she told Ms. van der Velden, is behind the wheel of her car.

Not everyone was eager to be photographed. Many had trouble saying no, not wanting to be impolite. Some said yes, but later changed their minds.

Ms. van der Velden blogged throughout her visit, first in Dutch and later in English. She included photos, observations and answers to questions that friends, family and Facebook followers asked her to pose to the people she photographed. She could never say for sure whether the things people told her were true.

What surprised her was how many of her subjects spoke of the foreign news media’s portrayal of Afghanistan. “Sometimes I asked the people: ‘What do you think the world needs to know about your country? What is important?’” she said. “And mostly, they said, ‘We have schools, and we’re not the crazy country that is portrayed in the media like this.’”

She hopes to return to Kabul after the elections that are scheduled for next April. Meanwhile, she hopes to pursue other projects inspired by one question, perhaps in Africa or elsewhere in the Middle East.

Her next question will be nearly as simple, she said, though somewhat less optimistic:

What are you worried about?

Marieke van der Velden “My name is Fatma, when I was 8 years old we fled to the Netherlands. My family still lives in Abcoude, but I moved back to Kabul permanently a year ago. Here I live with my grandmother and my niece in the flat of my family. During the week I have a busy job checking projects in the provinces. I see big differences with Kabul. Â'My family would like me to come back to the Netherlands, but here I feel like I can really contribute to my home country.” Favorite place: the house where I live with my grandmother.

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