When I read an interesting or provocative article in The Daily, I often head to the paper’s Web site to check out the comments posted online by Web readers. Reading the comments can help give a sense of where students stand on divisive issues. Often, they present important perspectives or facts not mentioned in the story.

Unfortunately, though, the current comment system has serious and inexcusable flaws. Far too many of the comments are patently offensive and inappropriate. Some are nothing more than spam. There are few mechanisms in place to prevent posters from misrepresenting themselves or presenting incorrect facts. Even many of the less egregious comments contribute little or nothing.

Viewers can comment on any article that appears on The Daily’s Web site. To post a comment, all that is required is a name and an email address, which can be easily faked (the name is published along with the comment, but the email address is not). Posters are instructed to “keep discussion civil, and refrain from using profanity, personal attacks, potentially libelous language, or hate speech.” But The Daily declares that that it is “not responsible for monitoring the board or removing comments that could be in violation of the policy.” Once the comment is submitted, it is published immediately and automatically on the Web site, below the article.

Next to every comment published on the Web site are buttons for viewers to report the comment as either spam or offensive. If an item gets flagged 10 times in either category, an email is sent to the appropriate managing editor, who then determines whether the comment should be removed, “veering on the side of maintaining discourse,” says Web Editor James Hohmann ‘09. (Hohmann points out that removing one comment after the fact can be difficult, since a whole thread of responses often depends on it.) Each section follows its own rules for comments. News Editor Julie Klein ‘09 says she monitors the Web site herself in addition to the alerts. Opinions Editors In Ho Lee ‘09 and Gerry Shih ‘08 say they tend to let comments stay.

The result of this decentralized and ad hoc system, which errs on the side of keeping comments online and relies on comments being removed after the fact, is that many objectionable comments remain online. For example, in the last few weeks, comments appeared calling a Rhodes Scholarship winner an “unappreciative prick” and threatening him physically; an article about bike safety received comments that are ads for porn sites; and an op-ed about Donald Rumsfeld’s Hoover Institution appointment incited comments with gratuitous sexual language. All of these comments remained online for days.

According to Hohmann, The Daily has discussed various solutions for improving the comment system — including requiring users to register, requiring commenters to be from the Stanford network and putting comments on a separate Web page instead of below the article. For now, The Daily has stuck with its current system.

This is the wrong approach. The comments do reflect on The Daily, so The Daily has an obligation to take responsibility for them. Just because the paper has the power to allow these flame wars on its Web site doesn’t mean that it should. (Hohmann notes that The Daily reduces its liability to lawsuits about the comments by not policing them carefully. I don’t think this is a reasonable justification; The Daily shouldn’t let anything appear on its Web site that it isn’t willing to defend.)

The sad reality is that anonymity on the Internet leads some people to post inappropriate comments. Given the challenge of policing comments after they appear and the damage they might do even if they appear only briefly before being removed, the best solution is for The Daily to moderate comments — that is, only to publish those comments that have been approved by a designated Daily staff member. When a commenter includes his real name and is a public figure — for example, a Stanford administrator quoted in the story clarifying his comments — he should be contacted immediately to confirm his identity. This way, readers can know that when they see a comment from Dean of Freshmen and Transfer Students Julie Lythcott-Haims ‘89 (who has both posted herself and been impersonated in Daily Web site comments), it’s really from her. In our digital age, with Stanford students up at all hours checking their email, designating several staffers to be responsible for moderating the site doesn’t seem too unreasonable.

Such a system is apparently feasible. The Yale Daily News recently introduced a moderated commenting feature on its Web site. According to Andrew Mangino, the paper’s editor-in-chief, this system has worked well; several editors manage to moderate all comments, usually with a turnaround time of less than an hour. Furthermore, the moderated system has dissuaded people from bothering to submit inappropriate comments; only about 10 percent of comments have been rejected, Mangino says.

With such a system, there is still a challenge of figuring out what standard comments should be judged by. One approach, which is what the editors at Yale’s paper seem to be following, is to allow most civil comments. This system would be fine and would rid The Daily of its current embarrassing comments.

A second approach would entail a different philosophical perspective. Instead of seeing the comments as an open (though civil) free-for-all, The Daily could instead treat these pages as a digital extension of the newspaper itself. The comments would be like letters to the editor — and would be held to the same high standard. The difference is that there would be no space limitations, and the much quicker turnaround would allow an extensive back-and-forth to take place on the day of publication. Such a system would encourage a higher level of discourse, which The Daily’s readers are certainly capable of, and could carry over to the print edition by encouraging more letters to the editor. Indeed, an online comment page could include an option to submit a copy of the comment for consideration in the print edition.

Either approach would encourage a more civil system of commenting. This, in turn, might encourage comments from readers who are currently hesitant to post, having seen the ad hominem attacks posters face in the current system. The result would be a system that better captures the views of the Stanford community. This is important: People do indeed look at Daily comments as a measure of campus thought. This summer, for example, an article in The New York Times about Condoleezza Rice referred to the “veritable stream of vitriol” that appeared as comments to an article about her on The Daily’s Web site. I wonder whether the Times reporter was aware that vitriol isn’t that unusual in The Daily’s comments.

Such a change would require a significant overhaul of The Daily’s Web site. As Hohmann points out, the primary focus of The Daily staff is on the paper itself, not its Web site, and so it should be. It’s fine if it takes awhile for The Daily to come up with a good solution for allowing comments. The status quo, however, is an embarrassment. As a temporary measure, The Daily should remove its commenting system.

The Daily should strive for high discourse. If an online comment system can encourage that, it’s a good thing. But if it detracts from this mission, it debases The Daily. Even if the Web is the medium of the future, in their current form comments are not worth the damage they do to The Daily’s reputation.

Rafe Kinsey is the public editor of The Daily, serving as an independent critic of the paper and as a representative for its readers. Please send comments and suggestions to publiceditor (at) daily.stanford.edu.