Our View: Why we’re eliminating reader comments
We want to communicate a decision we have made after much internal and external analysis, debate and deliberation. We are discontinuing the commenting platform on vaildaily.com. We will re-evaluate sometime in the future.
Many of you will say it is about time. Others will say we are squelching open dialogue. We have considered these arguments in-depth, along with others. We are making this move for two reasons:
First, most of the conversation in these comments below stories online has turned unproductive and downright hostile. The charged political environment and a worldwide pandemic have poured fuel on the fire. We do not have enough hours in the day to fact-check everything that is posted on this forum. I have heard from many readers, including several community leaders in local government, health care and business, who all share the same concern that this forum is not serving our community in the way it was intended.
Secondly, we have a small staff. Our primary role is to do local reporting on topics of interest for our community. Trying to moderate, manage and referee this mosh pit takes up too much of my time, our editor’s time and all of our staff’s time — which could be devoted to delivering more content of interest for our readers. You do have to be thick-skinned in this business. However, I do not want to subject our staff any longer to the continued trash hurled their way every day.
Our stories will always be easily shareable from vaildaily.com if you wish to move the discussion to other platforms. We will continue to post most of our content on the Vail Daily Facebook page, which, of course, does have comments. We encourage civil discourse but understand how things can get out of hand. We will not moderate comments on our Facebook page, so reader beware.
Support Local Journalism
For now, in our little corner of the world we are going to focus our energies and time on reporting the important news of the day and celebrating the people, organizations and cultural and recreational amenities that make this a great place to live and visit.
If you would like to voice your opinions, please e-mail me or any of our staff, write a letter to the editor or submit a guest commentary for consideration — which of course you will need to do with your real name.
Thanks for reading the Vail Daily.
The Vail Daily Editorial Board is Publisher Mark Wurzer, Editor Nate Peterson, Assistant Editor Ross Leonhart, Digital Engagement Editor Sean Naylor, Business Editor Scott Miller and Eagle Valley Enterprise Editor Pam Boyd.
Mark Wurzer is the publisher of the Vail Daily. Email him at mwurzer@vaildaily.com.