This Friday, I'll be at the Personal Democracy Forum Conference in NYC. I'll be on a panel titled: "Building Powerful Online Communities." I bring this up because one of the important things that contribute to an online community is allowing readers to become part of the process. Here, that involves setting up Grassroots Blogs, as well as commenting on columns and blog posts. Sometimes, the comments are truly insightful, and sometimes, they are a bit disturbing.
For example, yesterday, I was truly disappointed to see that even here on Townhall.com, a few commenters posted unkind things about Rev. Falwell. Granted, they were probably liberals. Still, it's a sad day when Larry Flynt is more gracious than a few of our commenters (and I do want to stress this was a minority of our commenters).
Please keep in mind, TH is not alone, here. Over at NRO, several readers have actually emailed them IN SUPPORT of Ron Paul's comments last night.
The point is that there are pros and cons to having an open dialogue ...