On Friday, the Washington Post began to respond to the outcry raised by its shutoff of comments on its blog, "post.blog". Executive Editor Jim Brady started the triage with a Q & A conducted at noon, and by the end of the day on Friday, some comments were restored to post.blog.

About the situation Brady wrote: "Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it's a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about. We're not giving up on the concept of having a healthy public dialogue with our readers, but this experience shows that we need to think more carefully about how we do it."

The Post obviously didn't anticipate anything like the blogstorm that hit--and its basic strategy of banning comments that are personal attacks or hate speech seemed to be a half-measure. As Brady notes, available resources were a part of its consideration in shutting down the discussion: "When the amount of time it took to ferret these kind of posts out exceeded the bandwidth we could devote to it, we decided to close commenting on post.blog down."

From Deborah Howell's response to the episode - "The Firestorm Over My Column": “So is it the relative anonymity of the Internet that emboldens e-mailers to conduct a public stoning? Is this the increasing political polarization of our country? I don’t know.” Dan Gillmor's retort in a post in which he advocates for the inclusion of comments and says that good comment moderation systems are feasible: "The problem with the Post’s comment section, as far as I can tell, wasn’t the fact that idiots were posting. It’s that the Post seems not to have set up the comment system with sufficient due diligence."

Mark Hamilton: "What’s happened at the Post (and what happened earlier with the LA Times quickly-abandoned editorial wiki and with comments at the early-adopter Ventura County Star) are healthy, as far as I can see."

Steve Yelvington says "big media" can take the heat, adding, "But that doesn't mean I think newspapers should never put the clamp on online behavior. I have no tolerance, zero, for members flaming each other. And if an interactive environment turns into a slum, I wouldn't hesitate to bulldoze it ... and build a new, better place. "

Jay Rosen conducted his own Q & A with Jim Brady at PressThink - be sure to catch Jay's links to commentary he thinks worth citing as well as the comments.