Rise and Shine --- Bad apples

Good Morning and welcome to the middle of the week!

Over the weekend, while swimming on a day it felt like the sun was going to land on the earth, the children (as most children do in the summer) started begging for ice cream.
"Look," I said. "Right now we are in the pool. If there's no fighting and no bad behavior, maybe after dinner we can take a ride to the ice cream place."
"Yay," the three yelled in unison.
Well, if anybody's ever had to calm tensions during a hot weekend day, the peace didn't last long.
"He splashed me." "He kicked me." "She threw a ball at me."
"OK," I said (yelled?). "One more chance. If anybody does anything to anybody else, no ice cream."
Not even ten minute later: "Waaahhh."
"All right," I said. "No ice cream."
To which, one of the children who really was just swimming calmly said: "But I didn't do anything. That's not fair."
So, I tried to teach a lesson.
"If one of you does something, everybody loses. You have to police each other. My grandmom used to say one bad apple poisons the basket."
So, what does this have to do with the price of milk? Well, nothing with milk, but I started thinking about this after hearing a story about something that happened last night.
People sometimes believe the comments that appear on the bottom of our online stories are part of the Daily Times coverage.
They're not, but that doesn't mean the comments can't cause trouble.
We spend much of the day putting out these small fires before they burn down the whole forest. We are recognizing the e-mails used to post racist rants. We check hourly to see those that slipped through.
An inherent problem with our commenting system right now is it's all anonymous. Everybody wants to put in their two-cents, but they don't want to be held accountable.
Eventually, I believe, we are going to change as a business and only allow comments with real names (something like Facebook does now).
Until then, believe you me, much of the day is spent going through the comments and stopping them before they can do much damage.
Some of the stories will now be posted with the commenting feature disabled. Sure, that's not going to sit well with some.
To those who don't like it, write a letter to the editor. You have to sign your real name and we do check.
So, if there is a story that doesn't give you the opportunity to comment, remember the story about the bad apples.

Rise and Shine --- Comments

Good Morning and welcome to a new week (and a full moon)!

For the last couple of years, we here at delcotimes.com have allowed readers to post comments on stories.
When it started, every comment was reviewed before it was posted. It became a daunting job (nearly a full-time job in itself) to read all the comments. Then, we went to an unmoderated forum. Everything was posted immediately.
As you can imagine, that only made things worse. Finally, we settled on the way things work now. You have to register with a real e-mail address, then you can post.
While most of those in the community use the comments to spur good conversation, there are those out there who just want to spew hate.
Either they think their comments are somehow funny or they need to feel superior, well, we'll never know.
When a story becomes a hot-button issue, it brings out all kinds. There are well thought out arguments (on both sides) about everything from earthquakes to health care to, most recently, teen suicide.
Unfortunately, when there is a big issue it also brings out the hate. For the past week, we've received nearly 40 'report abuse' notifications a day.
Now, we take every comment seriously. We want the conversation to flow.
What we don't want or need is racist or hurtful comments. Those will be gone immediately and the poster will be banned.
If you don't like it, so be it

Rise and Shine --- Welcome to the comment desk

Good Morning and welcome back to Wednesday!

Ever since we've added the ability to put comments on the end of our online stories, there's been a battle.
For the first few months, every comment had to be approved before it was posted. That time-consuming edict was changed so every comment could be posted immediately after the commenter registered.
Are there still too many racist and hateful comments? Sure. There are nasty people all over the place. There are people who like to spew hate just because they have nothing better to do.
On the flip side, there are many more who offer insiteful comments to the news of the day and actually add to the coverage. The story of the family who was nearly homeless after losing everything to an apartment fire was one such case. The community came out and helped. A story like that opens the eyes to the struggles of everybody else around us. I believe many other families received help after that story was posted (and the comments added) even if their story wasn't told.
The comments are still monitored throughout the day. Ones with racist overtones are taken off. If somebody hits the 'Report Abuse' button, the comments are checked.
While this is an area for free talk, there's no reason to offend. That has led to several of those who registered to be banned. Here's the deal, after three strikes (read racist or hateful comments) you get banned.
Much like the health care debate, we need healthy debate. What we don't need is uniformed yelling.
Or something like that.