Creating a civil discourse in online commenting

Once upon a time, when online editions of newspapers first were contemplated, some of our greatest enthusiasm was reserved for the expansive opportunities for community involvement and discussion that the web offered.

Those opportunities seemed endless then, and in fact they were and still are. The web offers people a chance to interact in myriad ways — as the news media have found, as entrepreneurs have found, as Facebook and Twitter and Backfence and eBay and eHarmony and a seemingly endless stretch of enterprising websites have dramatized.

We, like most in the news media, greeted the advance of online commenting with great optimism and enthusiasm.

What a boon for democracy, we thought. And it truly is, for the most part. Much more to be celebrated than to be decried.

But there’s a good deal to be decried too. Not just vapid stuff, but stuff sometimes that is so cruel, heartless and mean that it leaves you shaking your head.

A week ago, we published a story about the death of a suburban dentist who had been involved several weeks earlier in an auto collision that had left two others dead.

In response to this tragedy — a story about three real people whose lives were lost, three real people who left grieving families and friends — one member of the online audience left a comment poking fun at the dentist’s death.

Enough.

It was hardly the first insensitive comment left on dailyherald.com. For the past few years, the comment boards have sometimes seemed littered with them. Ugly, mean-spirited, wholly unnecessary things that make you understand why neighbors build fences and why good people sometimes don’t run for public office.

Enough of insensitivity and heartlessness.

Enough of name calling.

Enough of tantrums and hysteria that try to pass as pointed discourse.

As our mothers used to tell us, we can disagree without being disagreeable.

Our website, like most, started out with a philosophy that we didn’t want to inhibit the discussion. And frankly, we still don’t want to inhibit it. We want it to be an informative forum for energetic, muscular and pointed debate and commentary.

But the discussion must be civil.

Effective today, we’re insisting on that.

We will have a much broader, tougher, and to some degree more subjective, view of what constitutes comment abuse.

In addition, we are continuing to explore comment registration systems that encourage more personal accountability.

Online commenting can really be a boon for the community. It can be such a great thing. If you don’t participate in it, we encourage you to do so.

Just keep in mind one other admonition our mothers used to tell us: Play nice.