Newsquest rolls out new regional newspaper websites and now requires registration for its sites’ famously, er, robust comments sections.

Tom Shields: "Sadly, many contributions on the message boards are reminiscent of those letters written in capital letters with green and purple ink. In the old days, journalists had the option of consigning these missives to the bin."

Shane Richmond hits back at recent Guardian stories criticising MyTelegraph users’ views.

"Not so surprising news that the BBC has decided to close down its Today Programme discussion boards … The truth is that you either do it properly, or you don’t."

Mark Potts: "Managing comments on newspaper Web sites isn’t exactly rocket science. But newspapers seem to keep thinking that it is. … fully anonymous, ungoverned comments turn into chaos. Surprise!"

"[Jim] Brady, executive editor of The Washington Post’s online division, said … that he would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards—and if need be—automatically kick them off for good."

Express apologises to the parents of Madeleine McCann: "Please note that, for legal reasons, we have disabled reader comments on this article."

Edward Wasserman: "To say there should be rules [in newspaper.com's comment sections], that communicants should be admonished to strive for honesty and civility and respect, is not to justify elitism."

"[There is] a whole category problem with online journalism: people with no understanding of it, and with no understanding of how useable media comes about and comes to be trusted, can airily and condescendingly claim a company "gets it" just because they

Public Editor Timothy J. McNulty: "Earlier this week, the Tribune shut down comment boards on its Web site for all political news stories" …

"What has changed in the last year is that major media companies are no longer arguing over whether they should have comments under stories or blogs; instead, the debate is about how they should moderate them…"

Miami Herald Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos: "[I]f news is moving from being a lecture to a conversation with readers, then readers must be as transparent and play by the same ethical rules as the media."