Valleystar.Com Adds New Reader Interaction Format
By Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas
May 15–Welcome, readers, to a new and better valleystar.com. A new feature called SiteLife now in place on the Valley Morning Star’s Web site allows you to put up your own blog and publish your own news, photos and comments.
The first thing many will notice about the site is the change in format for readers’ comments.
During the past few months, certain news stories produced a great deal of reaction in the community. Readers often made full use of the comment section, turning it into an impromptu forum with page after page of remarks, discourse and discussion — true Internet interactivity.
Unfortunately, among the sometimes hundreds of responses, a few wandered way off topic with rumors, insults and nastiness, with the originator concealed behind the anonymity of the format.
Comments like those violated the user agreement. Before SiteLife was in place, we could delete the worst comments when they were brought to our attention, but we had no way of stopping new ones.
With the new feature, we now ask for a little more responsibility to go with online freedom of speech. Just fill out a simple form, leave a verifiable e-mail address and set up a profile page. This page displays all your contributions, and allows you to track issues and easily connect with others.
Just sign up once and then log in anytime you want to use the SiteLife features on valleystar.com.
SiteLife comes with other improvements, too. Often readers trying to post comments found they could not use punctuation like question marks, semicolons or quotation marks. The restrictions were in place to filter out spam and Web addresses as well as profanity and its clever approximations.
With SiteLife, the old hyphen-hating system goes away, replaced by a new comments board that welcomes back dot, dash, !, ?, $, and all their friends, including Web addresses.
As in the old system, you will be able to flag inappropriate comments for removal. New tools will allow us to block users who abuse the system by posting offensive comments or by deleting dissenting views.
The whole point of online discussion is to air and debate the issues, and we don’t think anyone is afraid of a respectful argument. But we do think more people would be willing to join valleystar.com discussion if fewer baiters are trolling the boards looking to pick fights.
So be our guests, sign up for SiteLife today, and feel free to comment on any and every story. Just be thoughtful and civil, please!
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To see more of the Valley Morning Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.valleystar.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, Valley Morning Star, Harlingen, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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