Five days of moderation

Tim Montgomerie

Last Friday we introduced comment moderation across the site. I hope most people think it has worked reasonably well...

• In terms of speed of conversation, comments are being approved every hour, often much more quickly;
• We are not censoring alternative views, as almost every thread confirms;
• Approximately one-in-ten comments aren't being published, largely because they are off topic, ugly in attitude, are extreme in ideology or are repetitive. This has, in my mind, begun to improve the quality of the conversations.

I'm making one change this morning. Comment moderation is being lifted from the homepage. All comments will therefore appear automatically on this page only. This will meet the request of some for a 'chat forum'. It's not quite a chat forum but will allow people to respond immediately to breaking topics. We will continue to watch the thread and delete contributions that breach our comments policy.

On another subject I hope you approve of the modest changes we've been making to the frontpage newslinks. We are making greater use of bullet point news summaries so that we present more information without the page becoming crowded. We are also adding in more links to the blogosphere, rather than just newspapers.