Some comments on the Comments Policy.

"Be polite and respectful at all times" is bedrock policy in the comments section. That means no personal attacks, personal challenges, or trolling, as broadly defined.

The Chronicle publishes a lot of reports on controversial topics, along with Editorials, Commentaries, and Guest Editorials on matters that are contentious in our community and sometimes beyond our village or school district limits.

We also provide a Comments section so that readers can weigh in with their thoughts and concerns. We are very reluctant to delete comments, and only very rarely do we turn off comments because a subject is very sensitive and likely to attract abusive comments from the very beginning.

Right now local Democrats are engaged in a very contentious primary campaign, and other controversial topics—such as whether to fully ban gas powered leaf blowers in Croton—have generated considerable heat both in the Chronicle and on social media.

The full statement of the Comments policy, which is repeated at the bottom of every post in a form appropriate to issues that might come up, is as follows:

“No hate speech, personal attacks, or trolling. Please be polite and respectful at all times.”

The reason for this policy is that we want readers to be able to comment on stories without coming under attack themselves; we also want guest contributors, whose articles we publish often, to feel that they can express their views here without coming under attack. In both cases, a comments policy that allowed personal attacks or even personal challenges would inhibit free discussion and not enhance it.

This is why comments are moderated—after the fact, and not pre-emptively—and commenters are given explanations and if necessary warnings about posts that violate the policy. The comments section is not a free for all, and moderated comments sections are standard for many media outlets.

In doing this, we are trying to avoid what we think are negative examples in some other Croton social media, especially on Facebook. Thus we have one Facebook group that started out being completely uncensored and free, and ended up being a cesspool of racism, bots, and hundreds of daily posts from outside the Croton community, by individuals who discovered a place where they could say whatever they wanted without falling afoul of any group rules.

We have another “community” Facebook group where the admins, well known individuals in the community, nevertheless allow group members they like to personally attack group members they don’t like, selectively employing the rules of the group in an inconsistent and hypocritical manner. The result has been a group dominated by a small number of people and mostly populated by lurkers who keep their heads down (we have talked to many of them.)

The Chronicle’s comments policy is designed to avoid all of this as much as possible, and lately we have had to employ it much more often than we would like. We do not delete comments because of their political or other content, but because they violate the comments policy.

Typical recent violations include: Personal attacks on others for their views; accusations against individuals unsupported by evidence; challenging other commenters to support their views, which is trolling under our policies; and outright trolling by posting comments that are irrelevant to the subject of the post at hand and are designed to provoke a reaction from others.

The comments policy also does not allow challenges to moderation decisions or public arguments with the moderator. Readers are welcome to get in touch privately to discuss moderation decisions or have them explained. These decisions are judgement calls, just like an umpire calling balls and strikes.

Until Major League Baseball adopted the ABS challenge system this year, questioning balls and strikes would get a player thrown out of the game. We wonder whether MLB has come to regret the challenge system, and not just because the umpires are often shown to be embarrassingly wrong. Be that as it may, please discuss moderation issues privately and do not argue about them publicly, as some have been tempted to do.

To repeat: The comments policy is designed to allow maximum expression and discussion of issues by disallowing responses that would tend to intimidate or discourage contributors and commenters from freely expressing their views. We think that most Chronicle readers understand and respect this, and that is appreciated.

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Comments policy: See above.