Some of us must be spending too much time in the shack and not keeping up with what's going on in the real world.
Unfortunately, ALL Internet sites that allow reader comments are having trouble managing the increasing number of abusive comments. The whole idea of free debate carried out in a courteous and respectful manner seems to be a thing of the past.
A large number of newspapers have either totally removed their comments function or limited it to subscribers of the paper. CNN used to have comments but eliminated them several months ago.
Because of the growing tendency to abuse people and privileges, moderating comments has become a very onerous task for site owners. For some owners, the only practical solution is to limit comments, especially in forum sections that easily become attractive to the kind of people that you would probably not want as a guest in your house.