Keep posting, keep it clean

As you read this, hopefully you have already voted or plan to vote in today’s state primary election. Statistically speaking, few registered voters participate in primaries, but we hope the Mat-Su will have a strong showing at the polls today.

We’ve already broken out the soapbox to preach the importance of voting. In addition to the politically charged atmosphere in the Mat-Su Valley, this 2008 election season is exciting for staff at the Frontiersman as technology allows us to bring the Valley together for healthy political debate like never before.

Since launching our improved Web site — frontiersman.com — last September, more people are accessing their hometown news. Also, more people are finding an interactive outlet to express themselves about local stories, issues and events. In July, some 92,795 visitors viewed 443,383 pages at frontiersman.com. That’s a marked increase over July 2007 of nearly 29 percent for visitors and more than 64 percent for page views.

Those July 2008 visitors also made 1,025 comments on stories posted online, an encouraging example of healthy community debate and reaction. As election season has progressed, those online comments have naturally taken a more political bent as supporters and detractors of candidates make their pitches to readers.

While tantalizing and exciting, it’s easy to see how without some measure of responsibility such community comment boards can also get out of hand. We aren’t the Internet police — and don’t want to be — but have to maintain a level of responsibility for what shows up on those comment boards.

We don’t edit those commenting on a story or responding to others who add to the thread; either they are approved to go through or not. Also, we are as liberal as possible in allowing as much as possible. The double-edge to this sword is the Frontiersman is set up to be labeled as “biased” for or against any number of issues or candidates by not allowing comments deemed not appropriate or that make claims of fact that cannot reasonably be verified.

In bringing you local news in these pages three times a week and breaking news online daily, we simply don’t have the resources to investigate the personal lives and moral histories of certain candidates or the claims made by some posters. For example (not taken from any postings at frontiersman.com), candidate so-and-so may be a raging alcoholic, failed to finish high school by flunking home economics or once killed a man in Reno. Verifying such claims is an unreasonable use of our resources and allowing people to make up anything about an individual for public consumption without such verification would be irresponsible.

Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent or any other political affiliation, enjoy our Valley online community and continue to post those comments. Review our online commenting policy on this page. Be smart, be witty or even be a little crass or sarcastic, but be reasonable.

Online commenting

The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman welcomes and encourages readers to comment on stories posted to its Web site, www.frontiersman.com. We strive to provide a lively, open forum for local news, information and debate. Readers may comment on any story posted at www.frontiersman.com and may remain anonymous. Comments will not be edited or modified in any way, but must be approved by the Frontiersman before posting live to the site. We encourage comments that are thought-provoking, topical, on point, constructive and are open to reaction from other readers. We discourage comments not on topic with the targeted story or other comments, or are insulting or mean-spirited. We will not allow comments that are libelous in any way, fraudulent, contain advertising or are excessively abusive, harassing, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, threatening, pornographic, indecent or are derogatory of others on the basis of political affiliation, gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual preference or disability. We also will not allow comments that constitute or encourage conduct that would violate any local, state, national or international laws.