washingtonpost.com shuts down reader comments

Last week, washingtonpost.com turned off the reader comments feature on a blog, after several comments containing personal attacks and profanity were posted on an item about Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell's recent column about the Abramoff scandal.

In a posting to the blog, washingtonpost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady wrote, "Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about. We're not giving up on the concept of having a healthy public dialogue with our readers, but this experience shows that we need to think more carefully about how we do it."

After the decision, Brady took questions from readers to discuss his decision and user interactivity.

He says turning off the comments "was the quickest way to remove the problematic [comments] that were starting to overwhelm our ability to get rid of them. ...There were lots of good posts, and over the next few days, we'll go back through them and restore the ones that did not violate our rules, though we're still going to leave comments off on that blog for the time being."

Jan 22, 2006 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(0)

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