Discussion Boards Cancelled. Again.

Famous Czech actress Venonika Zilkova gave birth to her fifth child in May. She was 46 at that time. The baby boy died a few days ago due to diaphragmatic hernia.

Zilkova has six children already: her own, aged 21, 17, 9, 1 – plus two adopted: aged 19 and 15.

For “some” reason many news servers that are affiliated with major Czech dailies decided to cancel discussions under the news articles that informed of the death of the baby [the first example is from Novinky.cz, here is one more from iDNES.cz]. 

It is more than obvious what most of the contributors said. That having a baby at the age of 45 and then one more immediately at the age of 46 is far from wise. Sure, it is everybody’s personal decision. But it is not wise.

It makes absolutely no sense to cancel discussions even when most of the contributors are insensitive. Their remarks are not racist, they are not illegal. They might be to some extent offensive (“she got what she deserved”) but being offensive is not illegal. There are U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq and there are numerous posts on this subject underneath the articles in U.S. dailies and I don’t think anybody has ever thought of cancelling particular discussions. 

In principle, you either DO allow discussions or you DON’T. You either decide you let people say what they feel like saying about the particular subject, or you don’t. It is legitimate to erase single contributions that violate appropriate legislation [racist attacks]. But that is as far as a decision could go.