A plea for more thoughtful comments

When redesigning the LWN site in 2002, we thought long and hard aboutwhether the ability to post comments should be part of it; LWN had notoffered that feature for the first four years of its existence. There werealready plenty of examples of how comments can go bad by then, but wedecided to trust our readers to keep things under control. Much of thetime, that trust has proved justified, but there have been times wherethings have not gone so well. This time is quickly becoming one of thoseothers.