Debate Not Wanted at the Gay Bay Chronicle

Little Green Footballs and others discovered that the website of the San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com) has employed a cute little trick in the comments sections of their articles. If a comment is made that disagrees with the liberal orthodoxy of the paper, that comment is deleted by the website manager, but in a nifty little trick of programming, the commenter will continue to see his post on the site. However, nobody else will. They also have a secret blacklist of commenters whose comments are automatically deleted from the site (though the commenters don't know it and see the comments when they go on the site). I don't know the code magic that makes that happen, but it didn't take Charles at LGF long to figure it out.

What effect does this have? LGF explains:

This has two effects:

1) it reduces the grief the administrators have to put up with (no “why did you delete my comment?!!” emails), and

2) it marginalizes and demoralizes the deleted commenter, who has no idea the administrators are doing this, but thinks everyone else is simply ignoring their posts. No one ever reacts to them, and no one ever recommends them. Any chance of real debate simply ... goes away.

Another liberal site, ThinkProgress.com, is reportedly doing it as well. The left isn't fond of comments that make them look silly. Rather than delete the comments openly and admit their quashing of dissent, they take this rather sneaky and backhanded approach. Kind of cowardly, if you ask me.