Brodeur: In Defense Of No Moderation

The leadership at this paper is struggling with how to do that while maintaining some measure of intelligent debate and human decency. Do we let commenters rip in this, a free country? Or monitor them by the minute, and clean up the trash as soon as it hits the site? And who decides what is trash, anyway? Last month, former Washington Post executive editor Doug Feaver wrote a blog post defending “the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off-point and occasionally racist reader comments” on that newspaper’s site. It was a big change, because Feaver, like many editors, has worked to maintain standards, while still giving readers a forum to vent. Commenting allows readers to complain about what they see as unfairness or inaccuracy in news stories; to talk to each other, “And, yes,” Feaver wrote, “to bloviate”/ Nicole Brodeur , Seattle P-I. More here .

Question: Has Huckleberries Online struck the right balance in moderating the comments thread? Would you prefer a fairly unmoderated comments section like the Press has?