Comment Violation Test: How to handle comments about a black murder victim

The topic for yesterday's Comment Violation Test was Joshua Komisarjevsky - and it revealed that the New Haven Register needs to consider defining in greater detail how we handle comments that celebrate or promote the death of another person and how we treat convicted criminals, particularly ones with a jury-approved death sentence.

Today, I want to take a look at one of the Register's most heated comment topics.

Dallas Boomer became the 32nd person murdered in New Haven last week. He was black, and a lot of the comments about his murder focused on that. Some were blocked, some were allowed and some were very difficult to call.

Review these comments and tell us what you would do if you were the moderator. If you find that they violate the New Haven Register Comment Policy, block it. If not, allow it.

Please note, some of these comments were deemed very offensive.

Comment Violation Test Results: We don't agree on Komisarjevsky comments

The jury for Joshua Komisarjevsky agreed last week that the death penalty was the most appropriate punishment for his crimes against the Petit family. But when it comes to handling online comments on this topic, it seems we are a hung jury.

As of the time of this writing, my comment violation test from yesterday has received 22 responses. If you haven't taken the test, but still want to -- SPOILER ALERT -- I'd recommend not reading this post until you've done so.

Let's take a look at how your votes compared with our moderators.

Comment Violation Test: Would you block or allow these comments?

To delete, or not to delete. That is the question.

The New Haven Register recently changed its comment policy in November so that every comment would be held for review by the newsroom before being posted to its website.

The comments our editors have been blocking from the website are ones they find violate the following rules of our newly established guidelines:

The Register does not permit:

• Hate speech
• Personal attacks
• Profanities
• Irrelevant sexual references
• Libel
• Spam

Going into this new process, we knew there would be challenging comments that aren't an easy "okay" or "foul." Especially, when the comment is on a heated topic or sensitive story, like the Joshua Komisarjevsky trial.

And that means we can't ever close the book on our comments policy. Like the United States Constitution, we need to continue exploring, evolving and addressing these guidelines with our readers in a democratic way, amending it as necessary.

So, lets take what we already started a bit further now.

What do you think about the following comments from this recent story about Komisarjevsky's jury recommending him for the death penalty?

The comments appear exactly as they were submitted to us, and some were kept from posting - but I won't tell you which ones. I'm not interested in whether you agree or disagree with what each comment says, but am curious on what you would allow as a comment moderator of this story.

There isn't anything spelled out in our guidelines which forbids the celebration of the death of another person. Should there be? Should it be different for people convicted of murder in court, such as Komisarjevsky? Your responses in this survey can help us determine how our moderators should approach these tough-to-call comments. You can also view how others responded after you complete the survey.