redbankgreen has temporarily stopped allowing comments on its posts.

This action was taken because we don’t have the resources to adequately moderate multiple threads of around-the-clock commentary which often become, in our view and the view of many readers, abusive.

Coinciding with the biggest growth readership burst in the four-year history of the site was a rising tide of muck.

In the last 24 hours, we’ve experienced:

• An anonymous reader repeatedly posting that a business owner referred to in an article was involved in criminal activity.

• Another anonymous reader suggesting that the victim of a crime deserved it because of her personality.

• An implied threat of violence against a redbankgreen staff member, later apologized for by the commenter who made the threat.

That’s in addition to the chronic circumstance of threads veering off-topic and devolving into petty bickering, name-calling and the knee-jerk castigation of businesses and individuals featured on this site.

We regret this action, because it precludes the thoughtful, insightful and humorous comments that redbankgreen was created to foster. But the growing presence of trolls has prompted feedback from readers and advertisers who are fed up. So are we.

When will comments be back? We don’t know the answer at the moment, but we’re looking at various means of again providing the “town square for an unsquare town” that this site prides itself as.

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