Category Archives: Pantagraph

Pantagraph, Peoria Journal Star

Pantagraph fed up with offensive comments

10 Comments

The Bloomington Pantagraph has disabled the comments section of their site all weekend because of rampant incivility and personal attacks. In a letter to their readers originally posted December 30, 2009, editor Mark Pickering stated that comments have too often been “offensive and devoid of civility, the worst of which include personal attacks and/or assertions that have nothing to do with the story.”

The ban on commenting over the weekend is intended to be a “cooling off period” and a wake-up call to readers, reminding them “that the reason comments are allowed in the first place is to foster a ‘spirit of community involvement and conversation.'” The comments sections will be turned back on January 4, 2010. Pickering warns, however, “Continued abuse of our standards could lead to further restrictions.”

This once again begs the question: Should newspapers allow comments in the first place? The argument has been made by many that they shouldn’t (here’s one excellent treatment). I tend to agree. Let blogs be blogs, and newspapers be newspapers. The comments on the Journal Star’s website are often just as bad as the Pantagraph’s; I don’t believe it would be any kind of loss if they removed the comments section entirely.

Speaking of the Journal Star: I find it funny that they simply printed the Associated Press report of the Pantagraph’s decision instead of writing an original report on it. I guess when you’re short-staffed, AP coverage of local stories is a godsend.

Pantagraph, Peoria Pundit

The password is: CIVILITY

8 Comments

IncivilityCivility is all the rage these days.

First Billy Dennis over at the newly-christened “Peoria Pundits” had to institute a civility policy (twice) because of escalating flame wars not only in the comments sections, but in the posts themselves. It was like “Lord of the Flies” for a while there.

Now, I see over at the Bloomington Pantagraph that they’ve had to do the same thing, except they may be a bit more aggressive than Billy:

So, beginning today, our screeners will not allow users to be rude, take pot shots at others or call names in comments posted on our site. Hopefully, this will change the tone of the conversation and keep people focused on a discussion of the issues and not calling each other “idiots” because they have misspelled a word or two.

They can afford to be more aggressive — they have screeners. They’ve gotten over 230 comments to their plea for civility saying polite and courteous things like, “Pantagraph, thank you so much for protecting my fragile emotions.” And, “Your [sic] just going to to take the fun out of the comments, that’s all. Guess I will head back to cnn.com….” See how well their new policy is working?

So far, I’ve only had a couple of instances where I had to ask commenters on The Peoria Chronicle to be civil (knock on wood). They’ve always complied; furthermore, most of my readers have been civil without having to be told, and for that, I thank you. I hope I never have to institute a civility policy, but I suppose it’s inevitable.

We’ll just enjoy our little utopia while we can.