Herald-Sun: Comment or no comment?

So I popped onto the Herald-Sun web site early on Tuesday morning and was surprised to see a comments section had been added to articles -- just like on your favorite blogs, and web sites like WRAL.

At the bottom of the story on Karl Rove's speech at Duke were two comments left by readers. No other news stories had comments that morning.

By the time I checked back later on Tuesday, though, all the comments were gone and the comments link at the top of each story was missing.

Perhaps it had something to do with the second comment on the Rove article (a rather, as I recall, crude and profane posting attributed falsely to a user named "BobAshley")? More likely, of course, it's just down for some tech reason and will find its way back up soon.

Keep working on that World Wide Web thing, guys.

Comments

[Dan S.]

I'm shocked (shocked!) that Paxton would offer its readers the opportunity to comment on their "reporting" and then take it away as soon as there's any dissent. Especially in light of the manner in which the Herald-Sun's wikipedia entry ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herald-Sun_%28Durham%2C_North_Carolina%29 ) has been 'sanitized for our protection' a couple of times by anonymous users whose IPs lead back to the publishers of the Pickett Road fishwrap.

I'm still curious as to why Paxton Media Group has yet to establish a web presence at all -- there's no website that I've been able to find, which is unusual, even for a privately-held firm.

In full disclosure, I've purposefully avoided the Herald-Sun's website since they instituted their draconian registration/demographic mining system that requires you provide them with all of your contact information. I wouldn't be shocked if they start asking for a blood sample as a method of authenticating those who wish to post comments (if the comment system is restored).

[barry]

i'm not crazy about anonymous or even pseudonymous posting, as i said over at Gary's place, but i really despise pretending to be somebody else, especially a known public figure in town the size of Durham.

That said, two things about HS. One - they have every right to to do whatever the hell they want to as far as comments go. Two - creating a dummy registration form that does not provied any personally identifying information is trivially easy.

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

Looks like the comments are back on. Just in time for the latest batch of lacrosse lawsuit stories!