Dear readers,

cccWe’ve been thinking a lot in the last few months about comments, which we believe are a large part of Bwog’s function as a public forum. Lately, a particularly bad spate of offensive remarks and ad hominem attacks have diminished the value of that function. At the beginning of the year, we added this comment policy, which hasn’t done much to prevent nasty posts. Although other blogs require users to register with e-mail addresses, we’ve been hesitant to do the same, both because of the relative ease with which different identities could be adopted, and the belief that students are entitled to a degree of anonymity. After a few long e-mail chains, we’ve come up with a tentative solution: having all comments posted from the same location on a single thread highlight when you click on one. That way, at least you could see if someone was monopolizing the discussion.

But you probably have better ideas than we do. How should the comments be moderated? How much anonymity would you sacrifice for knowledge? What do you you think should be censored, and what’s just free speech?

Please use the comment thread to talk about…comment threads.

Welcome to summer,

Bwog Staff