Author: Todd

This is awesome.  I wrote the following comment to the forum “moderators” at WRAL and look at what they sent me back…  apparently I was “inconsiderate or abusive” towards the draconian comment police.

“Stop moderating by opinion instead of guidelines.  It’s way too obvious.  In fact, you should stop moderating through the use of humans.  That equates to the suppression of speech and smells of agenda.  Millions of unmoderated forums on the internet without lawsuit and WRAL feels the need why?  You don’t want anyone offended?  Yet you post comments offensive to entire demographics but nothing offensive to individual, anonymous posters.  Double standards… nice.  How does “internet moderator” come across on a resume anyway?  Pretty good if the next job you apply for is Draconian Propaganda Filter Specialist.  Be proud.

Your recent comment (above), however, was
considered inappropriate, irrelevant or abusive (as outlined in our
Terms of Service) by members of the online community and was removed
from the Web site after further editorial review.

Because of the volume of e-mails we receive on a daily basis, we are
unable to respond to challenges to why your message was considered
abusive. These reasons might include, but are not limited to, the following:

– It violated standards for online behavior outlined in our Terms of
Service (available at http://www.wral.com/share/page/2075928/).

– It was irrelevant to the stories on which it was posted.

– It did not promote civil discussion, or a member of WRAL.com
editorial staff deemed it antagonistic or meaning to incite argument.

– It contained language or content that was uncivil or inappropriate
(e.g., degrading, racist, crude), profane (including variations of
spellings), or personally attacked or harassed another Web site
visitor or WRAL employee.

Our objective is to promote constructive and thoughtful comments and civil
discussion among members of the WRAL online community. Please note that if
you continue to post comments that fall outside our Terms of Service, your
post privileges could be revoked.

We hope you will continue sharing your thoughts on stories in the news,
but please keep them within the above-mentioned guidelines. We rely on
visitor feedback to help reach this goal and ask that you also use the
Report Abuse link on comments you think might violate any of the above terms.

Thank you for using WRAL.com.

The content of your original comment follows:

See above

Thank you for your recent participation on WRAL.com by providing comments
on stories posted on the site. We appreciate you taking the time to share
your thoughts and opinions”.