Many of you have noticed that story comments — that box at the end of stories on Kansas.com, inviting readers to have their say — have become much more common on the site. We used to add commenting to just a handful of select stories each morning. About three weeks ago, we reversed the process. Commenting began appearing on every story, except for the select few on which we turned it off.
We’ve seen two results of that decision: (1) An enormous increase in the number of readers making comments and returning to the site to follow the conversations. (2) A marked increase in the number of hurtful, insensitive or just plain rude comments. The first result is terrific — precisely what we intended. The second raised a red flag, and we realized we needed to find a middle ground, balancing free conversation with limits on people’s ability to throw stones.
To that end, we’ve established new criteria for pre-emptively turning off the comment boards on stories. We’re going to more actively prevent commenting from appearing on certain stories that we figure are likely to attract hurtful comments. On other stories, we won’t hesitate to delete comments that we feel are out of bounds, or the entire comment board if the discussion has completely degenerated.
If you see a comment that you believe needs to be taken down, please don’t hesitate to click the "Report a Violation" link, which appears next to every comment. Clicking that link flags the comment to our moderators, who will look at the comment and decide whether it needs to be removed. We appreciate your help.
— Nick Jungman