Some people wonder why the News & Record did not enable comments on Charles Davenport Jr.’s Sunday column.
Blogger Roch Smith Jr. suggests we are protecting Davenport from the wrath of those who disagree.
Not so.
We enable comments on some but not all content, particularly in cases in which the comments are likely to be anything but civil, as is almost any story involving race or sex.
But it’s a fact.
We started using more discretion in these cases as the comments became rowdier and rowdier.
It wasn’t the only change we made. We also shortened the window on letters to the editor comments to 24 hours in an effort to better monitor them.
More and more readers were complaining about the meanness and outright racist sentiment in the letters comments.
They were right.
So we acted.
I wrote about it here.
Roch’s not buying it.
As Charles will confirm, his columns are at odds with my own and with the paper’s editorial stances about 99 percent of the time.
So we’d offer him a cushion from commenters that we don’t even afford ourselves?
Fat chance.
That said, we know our process isn’t perfect.
Frankly, we would like to enable all comments all the time.
And we would if more people would agree to be adults in our online forums.
Sad to say, we’re not there yet.
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