You often hear “don’t read the comments” as a mantra-of-sorts from members of the blogosphere. After all, inside those comments, there’s a chance that there might be a dumb comment, or even worse, an argument. So, they say, it makes more sense to focus on literally anything else in life, and promptly walk away.

It’s a sound idea, but it’s also a silly one. Which is why I’d like to address the comment section here on Canucks Army.

Personally, I don’t like the “don’t read the comments” philosophy because it separates the readers from the authors, which, in my eyes, is a very slippery slope. At the end of the day, both our staff and our reader base consist of hockey fans who would like to express their opinions regarding the always-interesting Vancouver Canucks, and seek a well-trafficked platform to do so. 

Comments can effectively work as peer review, and they can also work as a place to continue a conversation and bounce further ideas around. It’s kind of like having a bunch of people sit around a table at a bar – somebody brings up a topic, and their friends spitball back and forth until they either make something of it or hop to the next discussion.

Bar conversations can occasionally lead to drunken yelling, name calling and fist fights, however, which brings me to my main point – we’re going to be cracking down on a few things moving forward.

A concern brought up to me by a couple of our readers and contributors when I took over the site last month was that the comment sections on here were becoming very abrasive. I’ve been keeping a keen eye on a lot of feedback that our posts have received since then, and abrasive may actually be an understatement.

Simply put, the sheer amount of personal attacks left by a vocal minority of the community here, both towards our staff and our readers has more than surpassed unacceptable levels. People have suggested that they feel unwelcome in the community, and with the amount of vitriol thrown, I can’t say that I blame them. As well, there has been a “trolling” issue as well – comments left for the sole purpose of creating arguments.

I don’t want to say that we’re going “zero tolerance” on this moving forward because that sounds overly authoritarian, but it won’t be that far off. 

What we won’t accept:

At the minimum, these comments will be deleted. If a member continues to be hostile, they can and will be banned, both by username and by IP address. Unfortunately, we don’t have a comment reporting system in place at this time, so if you see a comment that displays these types of harassment, don’t hesitate to send a tweet to either the site’s official account or me personally, and I’ll address the offenders as soon as possible.

We have already banned a few repeat offenders over the past few days and have noticed a decline in hostile comments. We’d like this to this decline to continue, to further encourage a positive environment where everybody can feel comfortable with chatting. At the end of the day, we’re not going to agree with each other on everything, but it would be nice to have intelligent discourse rather than a never ending food fight.

As mentioned prior, though, these offenders are a vocal minority – on the whole we, as a staff, enjoy having really all of our readers here – you’re by and large fantastic and often instigate fantastic conversations. We expect that to get even better as we approach puck drop. It’s just a matter of weeding out the bad apples, and we hope you’ll help us out!

Enjoy the week ahead,

Jeff Veillette
Managing Editor