As you undoubtedly know, Friday night Repository executive editor Jeff Gauger pulled all Rep comments until Monday. Jeff posted on his blog at 6:21 PM:I’m out of other options for dealing with digital vandals during our more lightly staffed periods, especially on weekends, until we are given an appropriately robust user registration and comment moderation tool.
We are in total agreement, though we think "vandalism" might be an insult to vandals.
Before they were pulled and later shut down, the following ugly comments were posted on Preschool Program Faces Ax from Possible State Budget Cuts. Numerous readers have forwarded them to us, and we are not sure in what order they appeared.
DRichard Les Weiner
I really wonder if we the citizens did the right thing in passing this levy for the handicapped. What will come of it? None of these people are ever going to be productive taxpayers to any real degree. Couldn't we cut costs and just have them babysat in large groups or something? They wouldn't know any different and they would still have something to do and it would cost a ton less dough. It is just throwing away good money. Richard Les Weiner
why dont we pass a levy for these kids like we did for the mrdd kids. at least maybe one of these kids will grow up and amount to something. the mrdd kids are just money wasted with no hope of ever amounting to anything. the govenor is DARRYLic in his duties to cut spending on real kids who might become somebody
and the indescribably despicable:
Richard Les Weiner
with that new levy passing . i think the mrdd kids could at least help out and pick up the horse poop during the parade. it could be used for fertilizer on a local grave of our favorite sympathy seekers kin
I Hate Canton is not surprised that comments have been suspended, only that it took so long. We realize that Editor Gauger has much better things to do with his time than monitor crackpots, trolls, and vendettaists,. We also believe he has no desire to shut down the paper's most popular feature. There is plenty of room for dissent, disagreement and argument within wide and normal boundaries of discourse. As Don Cirelli wrote on Jeff Gauger's blog today:
Joe Blow” has the right to call Don Cirelli a “damned liberal” if he wants to. He does not, however, have the right to falsely accuse other commentators of criminal activity or to use the forum to perform a virtual dance on someone’s grave. There are limits to everything, and since your paper is a private entity you have the right, yea, the duty to enforce them.
Newspapers have a duty to themselves, their readers and their advertisers to maintain the integrity of all. Newspapers have no duty to let their online pages be the cat box for the mean, the crazy, and the evil.We look forward to the Rep's "appropriately robust" registration and comments section on Monday. Everyone needs a safe place to post without fear of being libeled or their families dragged through the muck by somebody's sick mind and spastic fingers. Although we don't know what the amended regulations are, it seems to us that the only people who would be upset by the Repository's new standards will those one or two or three people who write with shit on a stick.
Until Monday, we suggest you go over to read the comments on Jeff's announcement. Make make your own conclusions.
In these tough times I really HATE to see CANTON taxpayers put on the SPOT as we waste there hard earned dollars on people with absolutely no future or potential. Just have them stay at home and we could eliminate mrdd alltogether. I know some people will post now about how awful this sounds but these are the same people who are always on here crying and wailing about everything and are begging for attention. So I would discount them entirely.
Dick Les & Marie Weiner