Hey All,

 

I have a unique problem that I feel should be confronted, but I am quite unsure as to how to do so. In the interest of candor, I will just say off of the bat, that I have family and friends that have been negatively affected by this issue.

 

Nonetheless, in my hometown of Parma Heights, I've come to learn that there is one disgruntled resident - a single male in his early 60s - who uses and operates about 12-15 usernames on Cleveland.com. I did a deep dive into the comments, noticed copy and paste patterns from a few years ago re: the institution of the "Code Red" system for senior citizen health aid and it tends to confirm the allegations that he uses multiple usernames.

 

As such, he and his mother have written several letters to the editor saying several untrue and misleading things about the city administration. While I myself am critical of much of what's been done in the city, I know friends and family who would like to comment and offer counterpoints to what he's said - and I encouraged them to do so. Nonetheless, each counterpoint has been deleted throughout the last two postings in which he has offered commentary. When my friends reached out to me about this issue, I was first curious as to if they had been disrespectful, rude, off-topic, or demeaning in their commentary - after they shared their comments with me, it was clear that their comments were appropriate, topical, polite, and well-reasoned.

 

I know cleveland.com is a private site and can control commentary on their comment forums, but this has become a tad excessive. I, myself, created a username yesterday and simply posted a comment saying; "in this regard, I feel the mayor has done a good job", it was deleted a little over an hour later. The 1st Amendment is not implicated on a private forum, but I cannot help but feel a little frustrated. Has anyone else experienced a similar issue? Can anyone offer an explanation?

My opinion is that those comment sections on news sites are all cesspools and should be done away with entirely. I don't feel they add anything, anything at all, to the discussion and serve no productive purpose whatsoever.

 

Are you sure your and your friends' comments are being deleted? And not just stuck in some kind of moderation purgatory? And the disgruntled guy's comments are never deleted?

^Yeah, I was skeptical at first because my friend is emotional about this. But, when I posted and it was deleted it still showed up for my personal viewing, but with a red *content disabled* asterisks next to it.

 

And I agree. They should require a facebook login. People are more civil and cogent when their identity is known

I don't know why cleveland.com tolerates what gets posted as comments; they wouldn't in a print edition. I guess it's cheap with no moderator and gets then click revenue.

They should require a link to facebook. The anonymity bolsters the keyboard warriors

^The dangers of a one-newspaper town....which, of course, is the current reality just about everywhere.  Its particularly bad as its not just a 'private company' rather one that has the higher mission of keeping politicians in check from abuse of power ("Democracy Dies in Darkness as WaPo says) and thus needs an honest, unbiased discussion from the public without the paper taking sides.  The comments section on the NYT site is good and adds to the article. But he PD certainly would not aspire to such....  Re facebook, I agree that people would be more civil or accurate if their identities were known; however, I don't think facebook is the way to go--as one can easily create fake facebook accounts, but also, if one did not want to do that, I don't think we should be saying, in order to participate in a public discussion hosted by the local paper, you must have a facebook account, as not everyone is a fan or uses facebook.

^The dangers of a one-newspaper town.... and thus needs an honest, unbiased discussion from the public without the paper taking sides. 

 

I think they've given up that idea.  Most papers today have a definite political slant. The better ones try not to lie outright; they simply don't print what doesn't suit their biases.

Today cleveland.com is featuring live coverage of a sentencing.  What's next? Will they bring back the pillory?

 

If you want to know what absolute garbage cleveland.com has become, just check out the home page.  The first section that looks like it could be an article (below the advertisement at the very top) is another advertisement in (light) disguise.  The third section header is for "Featured Slideshows."  And don't get me started about "infinite scrolling."  Ugh, so much fail.

the funny thing is i notice nj dot com and oregon dot com, other clone advancenet news sites, have always had diligent and scrupulous editing of the commentary, whereas cle dot bomb never has. i dk why cle stands out so much in that regard. they dont want to hire local moderators for some reason.

On 7/10/2018 at 3:28 PM, mrnyc said:

the funny thing is i notice nj dot com and oregon dot com, other clone advancenet news sites, have always had diligent and scrupulous editing of the commentary, whereas cle dot bomb never has. i dk why cle stands out so much in that regard. they dont want to hire local moderators for some reason.

 

Cleveland.com marked two of my comments"Contents disabled" lately, which I guess means only I could see them. 

The thing is I don't know what rule I broke. No obscenity. No slander. No partisanship.  Just fairly mild comments, I thought.

4 hours ago, Dougal said:

 

Cleveland.com marked two of my comments"Contents disabled" lately, which I guess means only I could see them. 

The thing is I don't know what rule I broke. No obscenity. No slander. No partisanship.  Just fairly mild comments, I thought.

 

If enough people flag your comment because they disagree with it, Cleveland.com will give in and disable it. Happens a lot unfortunately 

Damn I had no idea of how toxic the comment section is on that site. It is just filled with old, bitter haters. I am a bit of an old, bitter hater myself, but they make me look like a damn saint by comparison. And my God do the commenters on there hate the Browns. And Cleveland in general.

^ I genuinely believe a few things about that place;

Firstly, there’s a relatively small number of posters and many of the regular rabble-rousers operate multiple accounts. 

Secondly, a great number of them have genuine mental health issues. 

Finally, barely any of them live in Cleveland, or even NEO. 

Edited November 6, 20195 yr by roman totale XVII

17 minutes ago, roman totale XVII said:

^ I genuinely believe a few things about that place;

Firstly, there’s a relatively small number of posters and many of the regular rabble-rousers operate multiple accounts. 

Secondly, a great number of them have genuine mental health issues. 

Finally, barely any of them live in Cleveland, or even NEO. 

I would love for a psychologist to spend a year on cleveland.com and give clinical  diagnosis to the different posters. It would be an astounding study.