Posted by Bill Johnson, publisher of the Palo Alto Weekly, on Apr 19, 2007 at 9:58 am
Bill Johnson is a member (registered user) of Palo Alto Online

We "lock" threads when it seems to us that the comments are degenerating in tone and thoughtfulness, becoming overly repetitive, or have become an uncivil debate between only a few participants. This is obviously subjective, but we're learning that controversial threads with emotional posts can fuel an escalation in the emotion and a nasty dialogue that we don't want to support on the forum. Since anyone can start a new topic, locking a thread is sort of like a "time out" for those participants. We do NOT lock threads due to the number of comments.

Posted by curious, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Apr 19, 2007 at 5:26 pm

Thanks, Bill, you can take this off the topic list if you like.

Posted by Censor Scissors, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Apr 20, 2007 at 8:59 am

I am truly getting irritated by the "purge attitute" of the palo alto online staff.

Completely reasonable comments are deleted.

Anybody interested in starting a new FORUM with reasonable moderation.

Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Apr 20, 2007 at 1:47 pm

Any progress on figuring out how to keep us to a "one person, one unique name" system? And then having a rating system so that we can filter out the ones who post all the time, saying the same things over and over? or have a tone that leaves a bad taste?

Also, anyway to put the names on top of the posts so that we can then skip the ones who say stuff we don't want to read?

I have said before, I prefer the ability to simply filter out using my way, than having someone else filter for me, and this would be a great system.

Thanks for all your work!

Posted by pat, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Apr 20, 2007 at 7:47 pm

Some relevant comments, e.g., regarding trolls and bozo filters and banning jerks at:

Web Link

Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Apr 22, 2007 at 8:41 am

I like the link!

I assume that a "bozo filter" only works on blogs that restrict each user to one name, though.

So, can you, Tyler, give us an update on if you all are interested in the one person, one name registration?