Letters to the Editor
-
This is what the Internet does to people
I'll admit, I get caught up in it too. After 5 responses or so I just start lashing out and calling people morons and such.
The ability for people to post whatever they want behind the safety of their computer screen has been pretty common elsewhere too. I saw this a lot in with online games where players taunt one another to levels you would be amazed with.
To help the letters section, a few things could go a long way. One would be to not allow anonymous publishing. I really don't see the reason for it. Is there a way someone could actually come to my house and yell at me or something? An online persona isn't a problem and only goes to feed the ability for people to say whatever they want and hide behind those remarks.
Secondly, an ignore feature might be useful. This way you at Salon wouldn't have to weed out worthless posts from certain people and we could tailor the letters to our liking. If a user is ignored, the line in letters would show a post by someone that was ignored and you could open up the post if you wanted to read it for some reason. I know this is a little bit against the idea of letting everyone express their ideas, but I already ignore them anyway. It just gets annoying to sift through all that stuff.
Of course, your section, (no offense) isn't really technically cutting edge anymore either. There are many other options out there now that allow even more features than I know about. (on Dailykos for example).
Responding to war room posts and stories is actually a lot of fun for me. If we could create a somewhat online community around this, I would be here a lot more...and I would pay for a premium account more easily ;)