Matt, as I tried to communicate on my post last week, by the time I got to the threads in question, the environment of back-and-forth insults was such that I made the drastic, and not easily taken, step of deleting the threads entirely instead of cherrypicking comments and leaving mass confusion (unfortunately at that point I had to delete the posts as well, but we're working on that).

As you say, it's a judgment call.  Roy, I don't think I'll call Matt's comment abusive--he just wants his constructive criticism public.  Of course, I'm always available by email as well, and as you all know from experience, when you want to question how I'm doing my job you can just come out and tell me what your problem is, instead of couching it.  :)

Two of the last three comments included "handed" ness (word?).  Anyway, Monday has struck us all...

A delay before comments actually post might give you (Jason, Steve and anyone else who oversees the blogs) a chance to weed out the offensive ones before anyone sees them to turn the blog into a thread of trash talk.  The North County Times (northern San Diego County) uses a delay, sometimes up to a few hours, before a person's comments appear on their website.

The flip side to that is that you have to become a censor, and your opinion of what should/shouldn't appear might differ from other people's opinions.  What you find acceptable or think only pushes the envelope up to the line, someone else might find offensive or crosses the line.

I don't envy your position, but one of the reasons I don't visit the blogs that much is because I really dislike the trash and inaccurate information that seems to thrive here.

Tom, thanks for the permission not to work 24/7.  ;)

Roy, we do not have comment moderation that requires pre-approval for the posting of a comment, so I'm a little confused as to what you're referring to, so please get in touch via email (perhaps you're talking about a Your Words article submission?).

Oh, and "take with a grain of salt" (from Random House's Word Maven):

"With a grain of salt is a translation of Latin cum grano salis. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote that the general Pompey had discovered an antidote for poison that was to be taken "cum grano salis." This was apparently to make it effective. That doesn't quite explain the current meaning, though. Other etymologists believe that, at some point centuries later, someone decided that Pliny had been skeptical about either the antidote or its efficacy and took cum grano salis to mean 'with a dose of skepticism'. That has been its meaning since its first appearance in English in the 17th century. It seems likely to me that the derivation is something like this: If you're going to believe that tale, you'd better take it with a grain of salt to make it more palatable (as salt makes food more palatable). I don't know that we need to go back to the story of Pompey's antidote for a derivation for the phrase."

I don't think you could have been accused of anything but "good taste" by deleting the "mom" comments

If you're referring to the comments Charlie made last week on my blog, I deleted them. But I did make Jason aware of them.

We should be able to police ourselves and delete offending posts from our blogs, but poster's accounts who are reported repeatedly should be removed sooner.

Now to technicalities.  Why is it that most of the time I get this heading.

Recent Post Comments

1

Instead of this one

• Home
• People
• All Blogs
• Posts
• Comments
• Inside Guide

Search News Obituaries ---------- Applause Businesses Classifieds Homes Jobs Ads People

The listings in the one above is horizontal but it showing up here as verticle.  Anyway..I can see the new posts on the second example but not on the one that shows up most of the time.  (The first one)  (And it makes my print here centered...weird)