Giving a voice back to a blacklisted user

I spoke with a NewsOK user today who wondered why he could no longer leave comments on NewsOK.

We had blacklisted him.

He wasn’t sure why he was blacklisted, but he was hoping I would change his fate.

I’m a reasonable man, so I made the change. He was able to post comments on NewsOK again.

We actually haven’t blacklisted many users on NewsOK. It’s not something we want to do. Generally, the decision is made because the user’s comments have gotten so out of hand and are rarely, if ever, contribute to constructive dialogue.

In the case of the user I spoke with today, I felt he should be allowed to comment. I had failed to conclude why we made the decision to blacklist him in the first place. So after a short discussion, he was back in business.

It’s just another story in the long list of discussion about comments on NewsOK. But it was another small step in improving the comments in the future on NewsOK.