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Moderated Blogs

I recently posted an article on Salon.com insinuating (okay, outright stating) that everyone on the site was old.

The title was meant to grab some attention (which it did) but it also posed a question that I very much wanted answered.

I received a lot of comments, but none of them answered my question. Most people were just putting down a quick quip or ignoring what I was saying entirely so they could state a completely different point.

Last night I was looking on another website where an article had been posted about an athlete's bad behavior. Of the hundreds of people who commented on the article, I could only find about ten people who actually responded to the topic of the article. Some people weren't even discussing anything related to the athlete or to sports itself. These weren't spammers either. These were (seemingly sane) people who took the time to read an article (I'm assuming) and then write something completely off-topic.

This brings me to my point:

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a moderator on certain websites for blog comments?

I'm not talking about a censor--just someone to do what a moderator would do in a political debate: Point out when a comment has nothing to do with the post it's being attached to.

"I'm sorry, but your comment has nothing to do with this post."

Wouldn't that be nice?

It would keep the weirdos at bay.
It would promote more intelligent comments, which would in turn promote better conversations regarding articles posted.
It would eliminate having to sift through pages upon pages of comments to find out if anybody actually directly responded to what you write on your blog.

Thoughts?

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