VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – “Go back to your cave,” and “she deserved it” – just some of the less-offensive comments left on our website in response to specific stories we’ve done.

Even the lightest good-news stories are often subjected to hateful and vile reader responses. Victims and other readers are targets of personal insults.

But we’re not the only ones struggling with mean-spirited comments directed to our web stories.

Erik Rolfsen, digital news editor at The Province newspaper, admits it’s a problem for them, too.

“Most papers across our chain have had the same experience where things can degenerate pretty quickly when people are anonymous. Some people don’t bother being constructive at all,” he says.

That’s why The Province and the Vancouver Sun are about to try something new.

“We are actually just in the process of switching to commenting that is connected to Facebook, so that people will have to use whatever their identity is on Facebook to comment. Our hope is that will elevate the level of debate and get rid of some of the ugly stuff we see from time to time.”

He says publishing comments is an important way of involving readers in a story.

But he admits about 10 per cent of reader responses have to be deleted because of their offensive content.