Over the last two weeks, I’ve received many angry emails and comments posted on this website about the “Awaiting Moderation” message commenters receive when they attempt to submit a post on this site. I’ve changed the way comments are managed, click read more to find out why.
First of all, the mission of SCVTalk is to encourage intelligent and frank discussion about Santa Clarita news, politics, development, and other topics. Discussion is what this website is all about (it’s in the name afterall), so I had to think carefully before I limited and/or changed the way comments were posted.
Since the changeover to this new blog system in January, I’ve posted 240 stories and received 2,375 comments, an astounding average of almost 10 comments per story. So it’s obvious SCVTalk is somewhat useful to the community in that people feel welcome to discuss various topics.
That said, some comments were getting out of hand. I’ve received scores of complaints over the months about the content of specific comments. I’m not going to get into the specific complaints, but suffice it to say the volume increased as more and more people started commenting, so I decided I had to do something.
I have no desire to “censor” anyone, nor can I since I’m not a government agency. What I do desire, however, is good discussion. So, to that end, I decided to emulate the newspaper industry in how they deal with Letters to the Editor. A newspaper like The Signal receives tons of letters, but they only publish a handful. There’s an understanding between the newspaper and the letter writer that his letter may or may not be published. That’s just the way it is.
So I’ve done the same thing with this blog. No longer will comments simply appear under a blog post. If you want to comment on this website, frankly, you should put some thought into your post, because each one will have to be approved by me before it’s posted.
Things that will immediately disqualify a comment from being posted are racial terms, vicious personal attacks against other readers or public figures, carrying on a discussion over several days and in several different blog posts, and other items.
I don’t like having to do this, but it’s my site and I want to encourage good discussion.
The good news is that 95% of you already do just that. Since I turned on this moderation feature, I’ve allowed about 50 comments and denied maybe six. I think you’ll find I’m pretty liberal about what goes on the site.
If you’d like a more free-flowing place to talk about Santa Clarita or anything else you fancy, I’ve set up a discussion forum that is used by about 100 people.
Let me also take this opportunity to invite those of you who read the site alot and are familiar with Santa Clarita to think about writing occasional columns for SCVTalk. I’m more than open to accepting well-written commentaries, news items, or even humor posts from readers. You can always reach me at jeff@scvtalk.com.
So that’s it. I hope you understand why I did this and I hope you’ll continue to read the website. I’m working on some pretty interesting stories that I think you’ll enjoy.
As always thanks for reading!