Commenting on news sites

is fraught with difficulties. There is usually a limit to the number of words you can use. Yes, that's a good thing in a way. It means you need to think about the most efficient way to use the words you have. Some people are very clever about that. They can be very amusing as well.

That's fine but there is also the issue of "moderation". Now yes I understand it is necessary to have moderators because the owners of the sites do not want comments to do harm to themselves. Responsible owners do not want to do harm to others either.

Unfortunately it also means that moderators can filter out material with which they personally disagree. That is not the purpose of moderation but it happens. They can also filter out material which they want to believe is factually wrong even when it is resubmitted with a link which shows something in action.

This happened yesterday. I had a phone call from someone who said, "Hey Cat how can I get them to publish this? They are wrong and I uploaded the video to show them. They still refuse to publish it."

My answer was, "You probably can't." Given the content it did not surprise. It concerns the highly controversial "Voice" to parliament. The video clip showed an exchange between a very senior public servant and one of the senators at Committee level. The Senator was exploring the issue of how much consultation, if any, had gone on prior to the government making an announcement. Asked at least three times the public servant admitted there had been no consultation. The government has simply gone ahead and made a major announcement without legal advice. That is potentially dangerous.

Now one of the more controversial columnists has written his weekly column. It is about this issue. It was available on line yesterday. It is in the paper this morning. I have read it. Many people will read it. It is an opinion piece. Many people will be influenced by it. The little bit of extra information N.... wanted to add might at least have caused some people to question what was being said in the article. It is simply a fact, not an opinion. Interestingly the video clip has disappeared this morning so I can't include it here. It's a pity. It was interesting but we don't want people to have opinions do we?