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Some of you may have noticed you get "An error occurred" notice when trying to comment on the abortion bill story. The Journal Star closed the story to further commenting after the discussion got out of hand with a multitude of personal attacks.

Unfortunately, our software at this time still shows a comment box even though you cannot comment. We have asked that that be fixed, because we do not want you to be frustrated after typing in your comment on what is a big issue in Nebraska.

This situation highlights a problem we've had recently on a number of articles. Regular commenters are calling other regular commenters names and otherwise violating our Terms of Use posted just above the comment submission box.

The Journal Star cannot moderate the comments upfront, so we rely on our community of commenters to flag problem posts by pushing the Report Abuse button. This isn't happening quickly enough in many instances.

While we value all contributions, this community should not and cannot be a place in which only the thick-skinned can tolerate the possibility of abuse by other commenters. The Journal Star provides this forum for civil discussion, and we will take whatever steps we need to take to keep it that way.

In some cases, that will mean banning longtime members. In other cases, it will mean closing comments if the discussion is getting out of hand.

The Bloomington, Ill, Pantagraph recently took the step of a "cooling off" period in which no comments were enabled for a few days. Other papers have turned off comments altogether or only allowed them on a few articles per day.

We hope that here in Lincoln we can keep our community a safe place for all readers to contribute to the discussion.

Reach Victoria Ayotte Brown at 473-7338 or vayotte@journalstar.com.