Submitted by Guest Contributor on May 22, 2006 - 2:48pm.
There has been much debate on Webdiary over its nearly 6 years of
existence about the merits of moderation and registration of comments
and commenters. Most serious sites either moderate or require
registration or both - we do both. Today's Crikey accuses the
SMH (moderation without registration) of systematically not publishing
critical comments on blogs. Meanwhile, over the Guardian's new Comment is Free
site (registration without moderation), a debate is under way about the
need to tone some of the abusive comments down ... what follows is the
view of Guardian Online Editor Emily Bell.