And what’s the deal with the comment form? Not only do they have CAPTCHA, they have an elaborate list on what’s not permissible:

- Post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, fraudulent, false, defamatory, discriminatory, obscene, vulgar, hateful, pornographic, profane or indecent information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions constituting or encouraging conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law.

- Post or transmit any information, software or other material that violates or infringes upon the rights of others, including material that is an invasion of privacy or publicity rights or that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right, or derivative works with respect thereto, without first obtaining permission from the owner or right holder.

- Post or transmit any information, software or other material that contains a virus or other harmful component.

- Post, transmit or in any way exploit any information, software or other material for commercial purposes, or that contains advertising.

- Advertise or solicit to anyone to buy or sell products or services, or to make donations of any kind, without the express written approval of Northfield News.

- Gather for the purpose of spamming, phishing or password harvesting email addresses that have been posted by other users of the Sites.

- Use or attempt to use another person’s account, password or services.

- Disrupt, interfere with or otherwise violate the security of the site or any services, accounts, passwords, servers or networks related to the site.

- Send repeated messages to another user or repeat postings of the same message under the same or multiple subjects.

If you want to create effective online discussion, you really need to do it on the user’s terms — at least until the discussion areas become popular.