Dear readers,

For nearly a year now, we've allowed you to comment on our news, sports and feature stories on Pantagraph.com. From the standpoint of fostering an interactive community, we believe this feature to be a success.

However, if you are a regular reader of the comments or a contributor, you have probably noticed that many people take full advantage of their online anonymity to not only speak their minds but also to offend their fellow users.

Take it from those who see all of the comments - including those that don't make it past our screeners - some people are not very nice.

Initially, we believed that posters would become more moderate in their comments and it would not be necessary to add a civility rule, but that has not been the case.

We've heard complaints from some readers that we allow too much freedom in what people can say, and we've heard from those whose comments we've deleted that we censor too much. The reality is somewhere in the middle.

We certainly don't want to stop people from making a legitimate point about the news of the day, but we all could use a little more civility in the discussion.

So, beginning today, our screeners will not allow users to be rude, take pot shots at others or call names in comments posted on our site. Hopefully, this will change the tone of the conversation and keep people focused on a discussion of the issues and not calling each other "idiots" because they have misspelled a word or two.

So, in addition to screening out profane and potentially libelous content, we also won't allow rude behavior. And it doesn't matter how rude. You could post the text of the Gettysburg Address or Einstein's Theory of Relativity and if it includes the words "you idiot" or "moron" it will be deleted.

And as usual, the decision of our screeners is final.