I am disappointed to see the end (at least for now) of TalkBack. There was a lot of garbage on there, but I think that it’s up to each mature citizen in a democracy to wade through the trash in order to get to the gems.
Despite the all-too-frequent tendency of TalkBack discussions to devolve into partisan sides trading barbs, I still think that the discussion forum was valuable in its own unique way. I think that the move to eliminate the boards entirely is a broad overreaction.
Couldn’t they have deleted the accounts of the worst offenders? I understand that the offending persons can create new screen names and come back, but are we really being told that that was occurring with such speed and on such a large scale that the staff was helpless to deal with it?
I’m told that there are technologies available to log the I.P. address of the computers requesting accounts and making the postings, so that if someone is a particularly vile or repeat offender, their computer’s unique address can be blocked permanently, or for a suspension period. They could make it so that comments are not immediately visible below stories and must be clicked on to be accessed.
Or they could do what NewsLanc does and have a moderator approve comments ahead of time, although that has its danger of censorship as well. Wouldn’t that be better than no discussion at all?
I’d like to believe that I’m sensitive to the coarsening of the dialogue and the offense that can be taken to the kinds of comments that Crystle was complaining about, but my sense is that the value of the discussion forum outweighs the fact that some of the dialogue is going to be base and offensive.
