For the benefit of Poirot, Graham and anyone else trawling through the blogs and comment pages trying to find a fault in the timing of an email sent or some slip of logic, this point needs to be made.

Gregory's underlying concern was not that the offensive comment wasn't deleted. The concern is that it even appeared.

Due to the lack of moderation on comments posted on this site, any comment posted automatically appears and is only ever removed if it is flagged (or via some other manual behind-the-scenes system).

So it really is irrelevant whether Gregory gave Graham time to respond or not, the damage had been done.

Michael.

Michael,

In your reply to briar rose some pages back, regarding the comments, you said:
"...If the moderator had removed them via his complaint mechanism there would have been no reason for anyone to write letters to the advertisers, or take any course of action at all."
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11583&page=29

How do you reconcile that statement with the one you appear to adopting now?

Correction,

The quote from MikeyBear is:

" If the moderator had removed them via his complaint mechanism there would have been no reason for anyone to write letters to the advertisers, or take any other course of action."

(Of course, the meaning stands.)

Poirot, I believe my most recent posting is the more accurate one. In any case On Line Opinion has not done itself any favours by breaching it's own policy. You aren't pursuing that very hard, are you? Biased?

MikeyBear

If Graham Young’s partner posted pseudonymous comments on your website defending his actions, you would surely think their relationship was a material factor when evaluating that person’s argument.

You say that “Gregory's underlying concern was not that the offensive comment wasn't deleted. The concern is that it even appeared.”

Are you arguing that all comments should be censored before they are posted? That would not be possible if the site is to maintain its freewheeling discussions across a broad range of topics. In the past month alone it has posted about 150 articles that attracted over 2,500 comments. It would be virtually a full time job just to read every comment, as well as a 24/7 commitment. In short, censorship would kill the site

But! Rhian when vile and hatred comments are published and printed in the public domain, surely they should be accordingly moderated and removed.
What this issue is about is that OLO on receiving complaint, of the above, responded with " for gods sake, he was just being ironic".
If demeaning and deviling innocent persons in a public forum is "Ironic" comment; then OLO needs a lesson in social skills!