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CBS News found out this brutal fact recently when it was forced to disable comments on stories about presidential aspirant Barack Obama. Obama who is seeking the nomination for Democratic candidate for the Presidency is one of the few African-Americans making a serious bid for the White House. You would think that thanks to the Civil Rights movement more than 40 years ago, racism in America is on the decline. But as CBS found out that their constant monitoring and deletion of racist comments was simply not enough due to “the volume and the persistence” of the objectionable comments. Of course, CBS is completely within its rights to purge any content that it considers objectionable to its image but the fact that in today’s over-sensitive age, some can virtually get away with racist comments thanks to their anonymity is disappointing.
Many blogs let alone news websites have chosen to shut off comments altogether due to the lack of reasonable and civil debate by the commenters. Thankfully, the comments on this blog however few they might be have been greatly enlightening and civil. I make no bones about deleting clearly hurtful comments. Also, by the way the top commentors on this blog are now listed on the sidebar. I don’t have a blogroll but this list will serve a similar purpose and even give the contributors to this blog some Google juice.
by Patrix | on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 10:00 pm | 
Media, United States, World Wide Web . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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May 16th, 2007 at 10:06 pm reply
Obama also had to hire security because he received death threats. Most of them were racist tinged. He was gracious enough to say that even if there is a segment of american population who hates him for being black,most Americans are good at heart and that if he loses the election it will be because he was not good at getting his message out. Pity he has no experience, he seems the sanest person around.
The republican candidates are too anti-evolution, pro-life for me to even think about them :(
May 16th, 2007 at 11:06 pm reply
Sakshi, I did read about the death threats. Incidentally he is one of the only candidates to receive Secret Service protection so early on in the race. He is trying to present an upbeat and optimistic message quite different from the fear-mongering by the candidates on the right. It remains to be seen if America wants that kind of future.
May 17th, 2007 at 12:03 am reply
There is some sense in Tim o reilly’s blogger code of conduct. Of course he’s wrong in trying to enforce a blanket code of conduct, but I guess self disciplining is probably the key to maintain the sanity of the comment section. (Speaking of which, Rediff should be applauded for its promotion of outrageously funny comment boards. :))
The top comments thingy is innovative, though my link seems to point to my old blog!
May 17th, 2007 at 12:23 am reply
Piker, although I largely agree with the content of the blogger code of conduct, I do not agree with any kind of controlling mechanism. And oh yeah! how did I forget the Rediff comment board. I must admit it is my guilty pleasure :)
Regards the link pointing to your old blog, I guess it is picking up those comments that were made previously. Should sort itself out with more comments.
May 17th, 2007 at 4:01 pm reply
[...] bemoaning the lack of civil discourse in comments all over the generic blogosphere, I find that the quality of debate and discussion on the desi [...]