Where did the forum go?

This question and answer ran in Saturday’s Since You Asked column, but since we continue to get questions about the disappearance of the Mail Tribune forums and the story comments, here it is again:

My question is simple: What happened to the Mail Tribune’s (online) forums? — M.I., Medford

Your question is simple, M.I., but alas, the answer is not.

First, we posted notices online and in the newspaper that the forums would be disappearing. That news caused joyous dancing in the streets from some quarters and ominous muttering about censorship from others.

So here’s the deal: The Mail Tribune’s online forums will go on hiatus for about a month and half while a new forum system is added to our Web site. When that new forum is activated, it will be moderated — in other words, before comments are posted, someone will look at them to ensure they are appropriate.

Aha, some will say, there’s the censorship! Not so, Chuckie, unless you define censorship as the removal of obscene references, personal attacks on private figures, incessant sniping between forum users and a general lack of verbal hygiene.

The old forum system provided a mechanism for responding at the end of stories as well as a way to start a forum topic independent of stories.

It was monitored through user complaints. In other words, if a user spotted a comment that crossed the line, he or she could click on a complaint link and let us know something was amiss. We would check it out and if we agreed it crossed the line, we would remove it.

Well, let’s just say that proved to be a big job. We received dozens of complaints daily, thousands over the course of a year. A lot of the complaints were about inappropriate or obscene comments, which would appear despite an obscenity screen (use a $ in place of an S and let your mind run wild.)

But the bigger headache involved forum users attacking each other. It seems there are a certain number of people out there who have a very low threshold for dissent. So if someone disagreed with them on a topic, a flaming response would ensue. If the second party was prone to flaming as well, a conflagration would break out. And we have pitifully few cyber firefighters at the worldwide headquarters of www.mailtribune.com.

As with many things in life, it only takes a few to ruin it for everyone. The idea of a community forum where people can engage in civilized discussions about issues is appealing. And there were many users on our forums who tried to do that. But there were an unfortunate number of users who seemed ever ready to go on the attack.

The new moderated forum probably won’t solve that problem entirely. But it should be a step in the right direction.