Comments, please

I’ve received numerous messages lately about the recent lack of Comments or the difficulty of Commenting on BayBuzz posts and articles here on the website.

First of all, let me underscore that Comments from our readers are more than welcome. In fact they are a huge contribution each of you can make to sorting through the issues that challenge Hawke’s Bay and provoking further discussion.

For our part, historically we have done nothing to limit or ‘censor’ Comments in any way … except for denying access to the very rare obscene, personally abusive or defamatory Comment.

Unfortunately, however, we recently had to adopt a more cumbersome security process for Comments to be made and deal with hiccups in the security system. Why? Because one individual in the community, who had been blocked permanently from the system, used the email addresses of other BayBuzz commenters to post malicious – potentially defamatory – Comments in the name of these other individuals. A Police complaint was filed.

So now we have installed a system – similar to many other websites – that requires you to register initially to be eligible to make Comments. Once registered, you need to log in with your password (or have your system auto-fill the logon) each time you wish to make a Comment.

Most netizens are familiar with this security feature, but we admit it adds a bit of inconvenience to making Comments. Even as I write we are considering a format that will simplify logging in to Comment.

We hope you will adapt to the new procedure and continue to Comment and add to the robust public discussion of issues that BayBuzz seeks to encourage and facilitate.

Tom Belford

P.S. I encourage each of you to go ahead right now and bite the bullet! Register to make Comments on BayBuzz. Then, in the future you’ll simply be prompted to log in and away you go (or you can set your system to auto-fill the logon).