The stories about the Crofton teen killed over the weekend have understandably been lightning rods for comments. Stories that appear in “Most Commented Stories” drive traffic. Users want to know what’s got everyone commenting. In fact stories can live on in “Most Commented” even though they’re no longer available elsewhere on the site.

To date we’ve posted three stories about the Crofton killing. The first was posted Sunday morning. Early this morning (Monday) we posted a brief by the Associated Press saying that two teens had been arrested. Just as soon as our reporter’s story was available we replaced the AP version with our own.

And here is the problem. Although AP’s version was on our home page for just a few hours it accumulated a good number of comments. But we don’t want AP’s story when we have our own – so the story with all its comments is swept into the old news bin.

One particular person who comments on this site has accused us of taking down stories for the sole purpose of getting rid of comments. I can categorically say that we’ve never done that.

We take stories down because we have something new and better or because the story is old. Any news site is in a constant state of change. We understand that some of our users put some thought and effort into their comments. Unfortunately we can’t guarantee that stories and the attached comments are going to be available for any length of time. All of our most recent comments can be seen at: www.hometownannapolis.com/your_say.html.