The Daily Photoist: September 7, 2007

They're just jealous.

The comment policy allows us to delete abusive comments at our discretion, and there's nothing wrong with that. Per the policy, part of that includes "insulting the writer of the post, other commenters, or Gothamist" but also "are almost always anonymous, and usually contain fake contact information, because negative commenters are almost always too cowardly to stand behind their opinions"—both of those points qualify for the "you suck"-type comment in this thread that was deleted.

We are much less likely to delete a comment by someone who creates an account tied to a valid email address so we can contact them for clarification or comment. We don't usually remove comments that are critical of the story unless they are non-constructive and uselessly inflammatory, which degrades the experience for the rest of the users.

The comments on Torontoist are almost always useful and well thought-out and spur lots of good, often contradictory discussion without degrading into name-calling flamewars.

Guest #2—you've commented on this policy many times and we've explained it many times.

The one thing that strikes me as so astonishing about these complaints having to do with how we moderate comments (which we do sparingly, about one in every one or two hundred) is that––though I have always welcomed them––I have never, once, ever received an e-mail about it from someone willing to put their name behind such a complaint. I am willing to talk about our policies with people privately, but handling it in the comments of a post––especially when you're comparing Torontoist to Hitler's secret police––is not the appropriate way.

So, if you have objections with the way this site is run, or the way that we moderate comments, please do e-mail me. I take those complaints seriously, and I am happy to discuss them. The one way to make sure I don't want to listen to what you have to say, however, is to comment anonymously and rudely on a post that has nothing to do with your complaint. This is our photo of the day, after all, not Kristallnacht.

When you take the liberty to decide on behalf of for readers which comment "degrades the experience for the rest of the users" you're censoring. It's more annoying to see you guys delete comments at will than it is to read "non-constructive" opinions of readers. The real problem is that what you often consider objectionable material is often valid criticism, and just because you don't like it, you shouldn't go and delete it. You may as well just turn off comments all together if you're going to filter out anything and everything that you deem insulting.

If you can dole out criticism in your articles, don't you think you should be just as willing to receive it in the comments?

Please, please stop deleting comments then cutting and pasting your justification based on your policy. Change your policy.

Here's a sampling of recently unpublished comments. I hardly think they're constructive to the Torontoist experience or that deleting them degrades it:

• "You're all a bunch of fags."
• "That is retarded."
• "test"
• [unrelated link to someone's site to solicit traffic]
• "nazis."
• "What a colossal douchebag."
• "You are all losers."
• [personal home and email addresses and a call to harass someone]
• "Oops, sorry. Double comment, please delete."
• "[name redacted] is a std sti spreading slut whore!!"

As David said, we unpublish less than one percent of comments posted.

Note that many of the unpublished comments are simply people pointing out a spelling error, and those sometimes get unpublished once the information is changed so readers don't waste their time clicking through to read new comments when it's just a formatting note (we keep comments that point out errors that might have been in an article where someone reading it the first time may have been misled).

As for accusations of censorship, we never claim that everyone can say whatever they want in the comments section—especially anonymously. Most of the time, however, any comment posted will remain.