All this moderating and filtering and other censorship lite stuff is nonsense. The Powers That Be here should keep the free for all and just limit the comment time allowed for each article. I'd say a day at most. By that time all that needs to be said has usually been said.

Thanks for saving us the effort and acknowledging that you're an asshole in your own words.

If there is a God, she won't give LeCastor any more space to blather.

Farhad Manjoo would have to fact-check his articles before he published them. Evidently that's hard work for him, and I'd hate to tax his intellect.

I prefer it remain unfiltered. Trolls are annoying, but we are all big kids with some ability to judge who is and who is not sane (well, most of us are).

Do trolls run the sane members away? Limitedly and temporarily. I think it is important to see everyone's views, even the views of those we don't agree with or don't imagine any sane person would have. In reality, many of us live in like-minded communities, so the clash of opinion and evidence (ok, sometimes evidence) is interesting and important. Sometimes people even find common ground?

It takes discipline to ignore the trolls and the would be know it alls. Everyone fails at it. But I think the letter section gives us a chance at honest critique. Table Talk feels more like a therapeutic or friendly community. That has it's place, and is important, but it limits honest critique.

While I prefer those with consistent handles, the trolls do have their entertainment or "you've got to be kidding me" value. I think the hard part is in understanding that the loudest, most vicious voices are not necessarily the most representative, and that it is easy to ruminate on the negative.

As for Waldman, I objected to the sexualization of a small child and the obvious attributes of her bipolar II disease being encouraged. Reading her was like a watching a retarded adult being baited while being restrained from intervening. You want to help, you want to look away, you want it to stop because it is clear it will end badly and it is cruel. Her grandiosity, illusions, and over-sexualizations really were painful.

The difference between the misogyny/misanthropy and legitimate critique is the ability to articulate solid, specific problems and evidence for said problems. With Waldman and Dickerson, people pointed to specific problems of writing, analysis, and evidence. Far too often with the drive by trolls (what happens with Broadsheet and Tennis are good examples), their complaints are overly broad, not on topic, simply stereotypical, namecalling, and/or not supported by any solid evidence.

I have to agree with some earlier posters: for comics and musicians, learning to deal with criticism AND hecklers is part of the process.

The numbers tell the story:

KStone

Published Letters: 806 Editor's Choice: 36

Locutus

Published Letters: 760 Editor's Choice: 78

Suck on that, be-atch!

He's sometimes a little too salty for my tender eyes, but he's by far the most intelligent and refreshing of all the nasty Calibans (whatever that is).

Keep it coming Locutus! You rock my world and I want to have your baby. Love and kisses, Kstone

What's so great about being selected by the editor? S/he is fallible too, just like some pumped up writers at Salon. Thank goodness, most of them are good, except for those at-large.

The letter writers should be discussing the de/merits of the article and not flaming each other.

I have been a little creep with my false choice arguments, coming here to Salon to pick fights and display my awful spelling, not to mention my miserable, world-hating point of view.

I've changed my mind about Bush. I now know that he is the anti-Christ and that our country is in terrible shape. Please forgive me Locutus. I admire you very much and I want to have your baby too!

a savage and deformed slave in Shakespeare's The Tempest

Cry me a river, Mr. Kamiya.

Whew, had to get that out of my system. Onward.

I'm a writer for a video game company, among other things. The best thing I ever did for my skills was writing to fans in online forums. Yes, readers are idiots. Yes, readers are mean in ways I never even imagined people could be mean. Yes, readers take the smallest ambiguity in any sentence, misconstrue it, and run with it to places that I didn't even know were places.

The main thing I learned, writing online, is that most people really are that stupid. The purpose of writing, as I see it, is communication. If someone simply doesn't understand what I just wrote, if someone places the wrong emphasis on what I wrote, if someone understands what I wrote but isn't convinced, if someone now thinks I'm a neo-Nazi devil worshipper and wishes me dead because of what I wrote, I'd like to know that. I may stomp around in a little circle having a hissy and spend dinner explaining to my husband exactly how wrong-headed imamoronnoreally77 is, but then I get to look at what I wrote and see if I can idiot-proof it. It goes back out. More yokels light torches, but a few of the previous torch-bearing yokels douse their torches and come over to my side. The process improves my writing skills in the same way that having a digital camera which allowed me to view my pictures instantly improved my photography skills. I haven't mastered the art (my photography isn't great either) but I'm learning. Now, when I write something, I can say, "Every person of subgroup X reading this is going to think I mean something totally different from what I intend and take offense right here. How can I rephrase it to avoid the problem?"

Trust me, there were people out there who misunderstood you and personally wished you harm because of the things you wrote before the internet. You just couldn't see them. Wouldn't you rather see them? I know I would. I'd rather they didn't exist at all, if I had a choice, but since I don't have a magic wand to chance people into clones of myself, I'd rather know what people are thinking than not know.

One last thing... not every explosion of reader hatred is the result of cranks. Sometimes even calm, reasonable readers respond with hatred to an article which is hateful. Before you start censoring letters, please take a long hard look at what readers are saying.