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Good Advice on Reader Comments

Rebecca Dube’s advice to readers who comment on the Toronto Globe & Mail includes:

1. Understand that an online discussion is not a free-for-all. Editors like me moderate online discussions for reasons of space, time and basic human decency.

This will be difficult for some folks, unfortunately.

(Disclosure: Dube’s husband, Jon, is a member of this center’s advisory board.)

1 Comment on “Good Advice on Reader Comments”

  1. #1 Bryan Murley
    on Feb 17th, 2007 at 1:17 pm

    Editors like me moderate online discussions for reasons of space, time and basic human decency.

    Actually, the first two of those make no sense at all in relation to the Internet. a comment takes up only a few K of “space” on a web server. Even on a web page, the amount of space is more than would be taken up by all but a serious spam comment. That seems clearly a holdover from the old “Letters to the editor” paradigm. Perhaps she means “length.” Likewise, how does one edit “for time”? Again, I think she means “length.”

    She should also make a distinction between her job of full moderation and many sites that have less moderation or no moderation at all. Many of those are indeed “free-for-alls.”

    I would have left this comment at the Globe and Mail, but it requires registration to comment, and I’m not that interested in their content to register for a one-time comment.