Thank you for your comments

Sometimes engaging commenters is a you-can't-win-for-trying proposition. But we have to try.

On the story: A woman was arrested on suspicion of stabbing a man Wednesday night at a bar in an unincorporated area of El Cajon, ...

... the commenters of course ignored the rules:Comments containing threats, ethnic slurs, foul language or thinly disguised foul language will be deleted. Posters who harass others or joke about personal tragedies will be banned permanently from this service. Keep it civil, stay on topic and your posts will remain online.

Then, along with the usual silliness -- we deleted the comment that said: "Someone made fun of her tooth." -- someone commented, "I'm not a cub reporter, but, duh, you can get find her name on the Sheriff's web site," posting a link to her booking information.

I asked the moderator to take that comment down and posted a comment explaining why:

The question I'm asking is, Should we, A) have deleted such a comment? B) or deleted it? C) Not have engaged at all. (which would have likely led to her name getting published and people making fun of it if any puns were obvious or going into Build-A-Fence mode if it sounded Latino.)

Here's the article, with the debate in the comments area.

Rounding up the brands

This is very interesting. PaidContent.org reports, "The New York Times will be getting a more international flavor as the website for the International Herald Tribune is shut down and its content is moved over blends with NYTimes.com for a co-branded global edition in the spring."

Forbes had said the Times was shuttering the brand.

It's a good step toward brand focus, capitalizing on the news brand worldwide.

Must be nice

Asked by I Want Media, "How will Twitter make money?", Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey basically said he doesn't know:

"Twitter has potential for different monetization paths. We think the best one is something that emerges organically. We listen to how people use Twitter and establish patterns around that. By considering that we can make those patterns more convenient and potentially charge for those.

"We have noticed that Twitter has a lot of commercial usage. That's very interesting to us. Twitter has a lot of people asking questions, which is also very interesting. Twitter also has a lot of people providing answers, some of which are commercially driven. So these are all things that we take into consideration.

"But we don't want to force any particular model onto the user base until we feel comfortable doing that. We don't want to do it too soon -- and we definitely don't want to do it too late. But the time is not right now."

These are tough times, indeed, but it does show how the Buzz Thing of The Moment has a ways to go toward real viability.