Latest local news, weather and high school sports for Tri-State area

Greetings,

We have listened to you, our viewers and are implementing a change to our website commenting feature.  At this time, visitors who would like to make comments on the website will need to login with their Facebook account in order to do so.

We are very proud to provide to our community a platform in which to have spirited, open, and important conversations about the stories and news events that impact our lives. Our goal is to provide a platform that fosters that type of conversation, but at the same time is honest, respectful and consistent with the values of our community.   We hope that this change will help to curb the verbal abuse, threats and defamatory language that some users have posted to our website.  That type of commentary is disruptive to productive discussion and debate and, at times, genuinely offends members of our community.

While our previous method of commenting has been convenient and easy to use…and the vast majority of those of you using it have been using it in exactly the way we’d hope you would…we know that the anonymity it allowed, led to more frequent incidences of unproductive feedback.  You informed us about your frustration regarding anonymous posts containing derogatory language, and we heard you.

In the spirit of active discussion and debate, we wish to make our community feel safe and unthreatened, but like in any community, stimulating dialog and debate can only happen if the participants are respectful of each other.

We apologize for any inconvenience if you do not currently have a Facebook account.  We invite you to register with Facebook. Our team has collected links and prepared material to assist you in creating an account and understanding Facebook’s privacy preferences:  http://www.connecttristates.com/news/story.aspx?id=690886.  We really appreciate your patience.

This is a welcome change that will strengthen our community.  If you would like to ask us any questions or let us know how you feel about this change, please contact me at the station or via email at khqa@khqa.com.

Best Regards,
Mara Clingingsmith
President/CEO
KHQA, ABC 7.2 & ConnectTri-States.com