Yes, a private enterprise that is devoid of any credibility. I wasn’t referring to the rape articles.

Has anyone considered that J Farrugia might in fact be the moderator? The approach to selecting comments for upload would strongly hint at this.

[Daphne – Obviously. But I knew at the outset something that timesofmalta.com hasn’t caught onto yet: that when you allow the comments-board to be dominated by people who are sub-literate, incoherent, can’t spell and use multiple interrogation and exclamation marks, the standard falls and the sensible, literature people are put off from participating except when really driven to do so. And so the comments-board ends up reading like a group therapy session for the mentally unsound who left school at nine. So, I don’t allow terrible spelling or slipshod grammar as far as possible, insist on proper punctuation and capital letters at the start of sentences, ban this !!!!!????? and this…….. and am generally Miss Whiplash. But you can’t complain, because the net result is civilised.]

[Daphne – timesofmalta.com is a private enterprise and it is not obliged to upload anything unless it wants to. On the other hand, it is obliged to uphold the law of the land and not publish comments which slander others, still less comments which libel an 11-year-old rape victim and adults who were themselves victims of abuse in childhood.]

Unfortunately The Times censors much more than contributions to this article.

Freedom of speech and democracy under Gonzi have inevitably dwindled! And The Times have contributed a lot to this sad situation.

Interesting thought, Karm. She’s probably over there right now trying to climb the damn thing.

Do you mean Dr. Chetcuti LL.D, of Arani Issa fame and violin dilettante?

[Daphne – No, Joseph Carmel Chetcuti is in his 60s and lives in Australia, but maintains a presence in the Maltese media, latterly through his book ‘Queer Mediterranean Memories’, which attracted the attention of the Bishop of Gozo.]

Nobody will ever understand what measure is used as it is completely arbitrary and inconsistent. I once had the temerity to comment on the news value of a particular article and since then my comments were not published anymore.

Ironically, a person having my very same name but with severe problems where spelling and grammar are concerned was published a number of times, demonstrating that my comments were actively censored (as opposed to being inadvertently “lost”).

I also have the impression that racist or extreme right-wing comments are given preference on timesofmalta.com.