Black Press Changes Method Of Commenting On Stories- Opinion250 Takes a Different Position
By Ben Meisner
Thursday, November 24, 2011 03:45 AM
Black Press, who operate amongst other news venues the Prince George Free Press, has announced that effective December 1st they no longer will allow comments on their site in the present configuration.
Black Press will move to a system where you register on Face Book and that then gives you the access to get to their site to post a comment.
Black Press argues that this will eliminate the problems of having posters, using the stories as a back drop for their own personal likes or dislikes, will give them (Black Press) a better idea of who is on their site and will eliminate people who use their site as a chat line, in which sometimes insults are hurled at one another.
We at Opinion250 have been at the game longer than Black Press. As a matter of fact there was a time when they came to us looking for ideas as to how to operate their proposed sites.
We also have agonized over some of the posters who take perhaps far more liberties than they should be allowed to take, take cheap shots at one another, and on the odd occasion cross the line of what we think is appropriate comment about an issue or person. We have tried to reach out to those people by sending e-mails to the address they have given to suggest some changes, in some cases, cleaning up their language, and also we have deleted down right offense material or even banned some users.
In the end, we have over 17,000 people who have registered to make comments on Opinion250 since its beginning. Just over fifty have been a problem and of that number we have had to cut privileges to them on more than one occasion, suggesting that they don’t learn easily. Fifty out of 17,000 suggests to us that the people want to have the right to post while maintaining their privacy. We insist that when we go the ballot box that we have the right to privacy and so it should lend that we also would want the same in our writing.
Trying to censure who writes what and when is a slippery slope. What you and I might deem as in poor taste may seem perfectly alright to someone else. What is an issue to someone may not necessarily be an issue to another poster. Everyone should have the right no matter what level of intelligence we think they possess to be able to have their thoughts known. We try as best to not interfere with that freedom of speech unless you have crossed the boundaries of the items I mentioned earlier.
Black Press will find that you can circumvent your real name and address if you try hard enough. We at Opinion250 are about to go to court to indentify a poster who we feel deliberately tried to destroy our business, that is crossing the line in most people’s minds.
We enjoy on our site, politicians, many who you know, business people and thousands of ordinary individuals who want their feelings heard.
We will continue to operate in that same manner, it is you that we owe our success to and it is you who we must in the end answer to. All we have asked in the past and in the future is that you consider what you are saying and does it cross the line? That really is the true test that we all must adhere to.
I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s Opinion.
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Posted by: bohemian on November 24 2011 7:07 AM
Never before have I been personally offended by what and how a newspaper, online or otherwise, reports information. With the Citizen however, it's happened several times over the past couple of years. In response I have stopped purchasing their paper and stopped patronizing their advertisers as well.