If you have visited the comments on our stories recently, I apologize. This is not what we had in mind.

At their best, story comments add layers to a news story that a newsroom simply can't. Local expertise, interaction, discussion and a healthy exchange of ideas based on the news in the report.

At their worst, story comments are nothing more than senseless drivel. Mean-spirited personal attacks between people who know each other's screen names intimately but know very little about their adversaries in real life.

A few years ago, just when blogs were really taking off and hitting mainstream awareness, we started talking about allowing comments on our news stories. Around the same time, we had a focus group of younger readers tell us they would love the opportunity to interact with the news through comments. They said, "We want to play, too."

We welcomed the idea of allowing readers to hold us accountable, just as we try to hold those in power accountable to our community. We looked forward to the exchange of ideas around our news stories between locally interested citizens. But we also knew that some moderation would be critical; a truly open forum could potentially devolve into a cesspool of personal attacks and bitter name-calling (human nature being what it is). And we didn't accurately forecast the volume of comments that we would receive on a daily basis, let alone those that are posted at all hours of the night. So our minor commitment to foster this community – including the ability for users to "flag" comments they deem inappropriate – has proven to be insufficient.

We now find ourselves at a crossroads. The comments on our stories are marred too frequently by back-and-forth attacks between a small number of regulars who accuse one another of past transgressions and posing as alternate identities. We receive complaints that many of the commenters are, in fact, the same person holding court with himself or herself for all to see. And we are not alone; most news sites that allow comments have even worse conversations running on their sites. From what I hear from online editors around the country, we're actually pretty lucky (which is really scary).

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