Today we are changing our comment moderation policy to make sure that comments on Hoodline remain a valuable part of the site, and not a detriment to it.

Our previous policy was to review comments after they are posted, evaluating whether they meet our guidelines and deleting them if necessary. While this usually works, there is often a lag time between when a comment is posted and when we are able to review it. This lag means that an offensive comment will be publicly viewable on the site for some period of time, often derailing conversations and detracting from the topic at hand. In the process, it allows a handful of commenters to dominate discussions with back-and-forth, off-topic exchanges, to the disservice of our larger readership.

Our new policy is to review comments before they appear on the site, and approve or reject them based on our guidelines. Comments that are off-topic, or that violate any of our other stated policies, will likely be rejected. It may mean a slight delay between when a comment is submitted and when it appears on the site, but the result should be a healthier comments section overall for both commenters and readers. This pre-moderation approach is becoming an increasingly common tool for larger media sites, including The New York Times and the BBC, as they seek to encourage high-quality discussions among their readers.

To be clear, we are not looking to censor negative viewpoints or skew comments in any specific direction. We believe that a successful neighborhood-based site should foster discussion and debate among its readers. This does not mean that commenters have to agree with each other, or with us -- we have no problem with comments that are critical of Hoodline or the topics we cover, as long as they do not violate our stated rules against such things as hate speech and personal attacks.

Over the next few weeks, we will review how effective our new policy is, and will make adjustments accordingly. As always, if you have feedback on this policy or anything else Hoodline-related, we'd like to hear from you.

Thanks for reading.