Yesterday we wrote about the importance of creating public spaces for students to connect and interact. At cavalierdaily.com, we strive to do just that — online. Virtual dialogue is a poor substitute for the Lawn’s teeming throngs. But as The Cavalier Daily moves toward a digital-first newsroom, we are committed to fostering a web presence that is welcoming, stimulating and, above all, civil.
An informal contract governs the relationship between a newspaper and its readers. The Cavalier Daily’s debts to its readers, it should be said, far outweigh our readers’ obligations to us. If there were no readers, there would be no Cavalier Daily. So we are grateful for readers of all stripes. Whether you glance at our top headlines once a month or read the newspaper cover to cover each day, we are happy to have your eyes on our pages. We encourage your comments online and benefit from reading your responses to our coverage. But readers who interact with our material online or in print must abide by minimal rules of verbal conduct.
We consider online comments analogous to a letter to the editor or a guest column in the print edition. As such, we require comments to meet certain standards. Searching for praise in a thread of online comments is a fool’s errand, and positivity is not a metric we use in determining which comments to delete. But we hold that obscenities, defamation and ad hominem attacks have no place in respectful public dialogue.
A string of posts on an April 9 article, “Sexual Misconduct Board presents mock trial,” violated our terms of service for online comments. One offending comment, which we removed, said of a University administrator: “How does this thing sleep at night?”
We do not pre-moderate comments, and our operations manager is the sole person responsible for comment moderation. So the ad hominem attack against the administrator — which we reprint with hesitation, as an example of how not to behave online — stood for hours before we removed it.
Another poster, under the pseudonym “burn your rapist,” defamed the administrator by offering an account of mistreatment the commenter allegedly suffered during a sexual misconduct investigation. Without a way to verify the accuracy of the anonymously made allegations, we risked having our website feature libelous content. In accordance with our comment policy, we deleted the potentially defamatory material.
Some commenters are violently verbose. Others are merely violent. The comments appended to an article reflect a newspaper’s character. We do not want to be responsible for creating a frightening online environment. Public dialogue cannot thrive amid abuse and intimidation.
The antidote to a toxic online atmosphere is a modicum of civility. We appreciate your contributions to fostering engaged discussion at cavalierdaily.com, and entreat you to continue posting comments. But to keep the website a safe place for everyone’s words, we ask commenters to refrain from posting inappropriate material. The difference between our website and a forum like Collegiate ACB is that we strive to be a home for civil dialogue and a voice for positive change. And that goal requires, as the adage goes, moderation in all things.
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