People have called for us to experiment with tighter moderation…

By Derek Draper

Since we launched the beta-site just over 24 hours ago we have had many, many comments. Clearly there are those who want to use this site to interrogate Labour people (usually me!) about our policies. There is nothing wrong with that, in principle, of course. The question is whether a few people are acting as trolls and getting in the way of the kind of Labour-minded (albeit questioning) community we are trying to build here.

Having been, despite some complaints, very generous in allowing comments of all sorts until now (including some very personal ones about me) we have had some feedback (see below) calling for us to try a tighter moderation policy. Therefore we have decided, for a trial period, to try pre-moderating comments so that we can compare the quailty of conversation thus encouraged to what has gone on up until now. We will then see what longer term approach we wish to adopt.

Any policy will be in line with our stated policy:

“While we encourage passion and the voicing of strong opinion, if your comments are deemed to be offensive, they will be removed completely. Comments which advocate violence or those which include swearing or sexually explicit content are unlikely to pass the editorial process. In order to ensure an insightful, engaging debate we will also place other comments judged to be grossly unintelligent or obtuse or trolls in our trash can.”

Here are the comments which encouraged me to try out this new approach:

John Selby
Great site Derek, well done! Sick of Tory trolls already though. Don’t be afraid to take a hard line moderation policy.

rob page
something will have to be done to remove the tory trols from the site they are nothing but disruptive.

Mohammed Khan
Charlie – please don’t demean yourself by responding to disruptive trolling idiots like Obnoxio. Derek – please do use your editorship to get rid of trolls. Just delete their entries and be shot of these juvenile infantile and pathetically hollow individuals. This should be a place for proper political discourse not some guido-esque playground for people with no friends, no lives and no real point to make.

To these people, and all the other people who have commented, even you trolls out there, thanks for joining us on this, our first couple of days.

There will be some coverage in the papers (and online) tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that and don’t forget to sign up for LunchtimeList, which is out for the first time. We also have a very special post by a certain…. oh, I tell you what, why not wait. It’ll be up in a few hours…