New and improved "article comments" feature debuts at woodburybulletin.com

Hello online readers of the Woodbury Bulletin.

I want to let you know of a change made today to our story comments feature on the website.

Online story comments are moving off our news website and going to Topics.Areavoices.com, another website also owned by Forum Communications, the parent company of the Woodbury Bulletin.

The comments site has some new additions, including real-time flow to posts and yea-or-nay voting on the quality of individual comments, which will hide often-disliked posts from public view. Comments also will be threaded, making it easier for readers to reply to a specific post.

A group of moderators has been formed to monitor all discussions on the site.

This is being done for several reasons:

* First, we are an information provider. While we value and believe in the arena of public debate, we don’t feel our audience that seeks information must be exposed to public opinions unless they want that. Our current system gives the information seeker few options in that regard, as the public’s comments run directly below the stories.

* Second, Topics.Areavoices.com has been upgraded with more social networking tools that more closely tie together a person’s online identity with their comments.

* Third, the new tools on Topics.Areavoices.com also allow the online community to better police itself through the rating of comments. Comments that are repeatedly deemed offensive or useless by a majority of the community will be downgraded or hidden. This should help elevate the level of discourse.

* Fourth, the new system will allow comments to appear in real time, speeding up the discussion. The new system will have a way to report perceived violations of decorum. We’ll address those reports, but only after the comment is public. If we have routine violators, we’ll remove their access to the site.

The commenting commandments follow:

1. Keep it civil and stay on topic.

2. No profanity, vulgarity or slurs.

3. People who harass others or joke about tragedies will be blocked.

It’s our hope this new system will give our commenting community a more robust experience.

We encourage you to create a profile on Topics.Areavoices.com and engage with the community!

To read more about the changes and posting guidelines, go to topics.areavoices.com/about or topics.areavoices.com/tos. Register a profile at topics.areavoices.com.

Thanks so much,

Hank Long

Managing Editor

Woodbury Bulletin

Tags: daily updates, news