One of the many hats I wear as the Gazette's online editor is to help moderate the comments made on stories posted on the Web site.

We welcome your comments on every story and blog entry posted at DailyGazette.com, and most of the time, moderating those comments means nothing more than enjoying some of the spirited debate spurred by our reporting.

Unfortunately, however, there are also times when I feel like the referee in a street fight, relatively powerless as some of the combatants stoop to any level to "win" - whatever that means in an intellectual debate. Granted, this doesn't happen often (and for that I'm grateful), but when it does happen, I usually end up feeling disgusted with some (if not all) of the participants.

As I said before, I enjoy a spirited debate as much as the next guy (if not more so). The give and take of intelligent debate is not only entertaining, but also enlightening, especially when it involves topics of which I have limited knowledge.

Once in a while, though, that debate crosses a line and becomes personal, and that's when I become disgusted. The recent debate that followed our publication of a series of stories on local immigration has crossed that line - in large part thanks to one loud mouth who decided to mount a personal attack on one of the reporters who wrote portions of the series, then on yours truly for deleting those comments.

The part of the whole situation that truly disgusts me is that a healthy intellectual debate was already under way before this person came in spewing his filth. As a result of that filth, the productive part of the debate has been all but forgotten and all people are hearing is his spouting about our "censorship" of his comments and my defense of our actions.

For those of you who have not read it, we have a Terms of Service that we prominently post at the bottom of every page on the Web site, including this one. It lays out your rights and responsibilities as a viewer of this site and our rights and responsibilities as the producer of the site. One of our rights is to maintain civilized discussion on OUR Web site. As a result - and I can cite several examples - we retain the right to delete any posts we consider obscene, profane or patently offensive, commercial in nature or which contain unsubstantiated allegations or personal attacks and to ban any user who consistently makes such posts.

The person who launched his personal attacks on the reporter considers this censorship, which I find ironic because the message he's sending is this: Freedom of the press is OK, as long as you're writing something I agree with. I also feel the need to point out (as I did in caps in the last paragraph) that this is OUR web site; if he or you or anyone else does not like the site or its policies, you can - to use an old television analogy - change the channel.

We consider such moderation of the discussion on our Web site necessary to maintaining a healthy, productive dialogue. We hardly admit to being perfect and we more than welcome discussion (and, yes, even criticism) of our reporting, but we want that discussion to be free of personal attacks, intimidation and the sort.

Here's my suggested rule of thumb for anyone thinking about posting a comment on the site: Is it something you would say face-to-face to a REASONABLE person who could beat you to a pulp without breaking a sweat? If it would land you in a hospital in that situation, then it's probably not appropriate for you to post in this forum.