As anyone who follows the Politics channel here on Netscape is well aware, our members are extremely passionate, especially when it comes to hot-button issues like Iraq, the war on terror, and President Bush. That passion is fantastic, but sometimes the debate escalates beyond the issues, and otherwise reasonable people resort to personal insults and attacks in their attempt to "win" the debate. When I sat down at my computer this morning, my message box was full of alerts about comments left last night on
this post, where a few Netscape members ruined the conversation for the rest of the community with threats, insults, and, most disturbingly, the advocation of violence. I'm going to try to be really clear here: this is not okay. We are not going to tolerate abusive comments. We have taken away the commenting rights of the Netscape members who left the most offensive comments on that post. We have no problem banning users who pollute the community with hate speech.
Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. I've spoken with many Netscape users who feel like the name calling is ruining the debate on many posts, and as I've personally been the target of many abusive comments and messages (one day I'm a "liberal Nazi"; the next, I'm apparently "in bed with the Neo-Cons"), I understand these complaints. I don't want to call out specific members or specific incidents; I do want to ask EVERYONE to think about the consequences before entering into a shouting match on a comment thread, or attacking another Netscape user via personal site mail. Netscape isn't a typical news portal -- it's a community, and that community is weakened every time one of these unnecessarily abusive comment brawls breaks out.
Bottom line: Debating and arguing about issues is fine. Abusing your fellow Netscape members via comments or site mail, and/or using the comment threads to spread hate speech, thereby ruining the debate for most of the community? Not okay. It will not be tolerated.
