Why we disabled comments

For much of the evening Tuesday, "Two more students arrested for cocaine" was the most commented story on dailytarheel.com. It fell in the most commented rankings as we moderated and removed comments, and eventually we disabled commenting on the story altogether.

In a comment today, Xaniel asked why we disabled comments: "Did you remove the ability to leave comments on your headline story 'Two More Arrested for Cocaine' because of the criticism directed toward the DTH?"

In general, commenting is enabled on almost every story, editorial and letter to the editor posted on dailytarheel.com. We moderate comments after they are posted, only removing those that violate our Community Guidelines. But we also reserve the right to disable comments on stories. We do this when we believe, based on the topic of the article, that respectful discussion won't be honored.

For that reason, we've been disabling comments this year on all stories related to Courtland Smith, the subsequent investigation into the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, and, beginning last week, stories related to the current and former students involved in the police department's cocaine bust. But on "Two more students arrested for cocaine," we screwed up, and we didn't follow our own plans to disable the comments. Rather than disable retroactively, thus eliminating the comments people made that met our Community Guidelines, we decided to disable future commenting. We felt this was an appropriate compromise - and if you look, many of the comments remaining on the story are critical of how we handled the story.

Moderating comments is a tricky job, and we often debate whether to leave or remove comments. Usually, there's a pretty hazy gray line between those that are OK, and those that aren't. If you think we're not doing a good job, be sure to let us know what we could do better.