TalkBack, the online reader-comment forum, is returning to LancasterOnline.com after a four-month hiatus.
But when it resumes Tuesday, TalkBack will have new procedures designed to deter the type of hateful, prejudicial comments that led website owner Lancaster Newspapers Inc. to shut it down in April.
"Many people have told us they missed reading the comments that readers posted at the end of news stories," said Ernest Schreiber, LancasterOnline editor.
"LancasterOnline wanted to bring back these comments, but in a way that blocks or quickly removes offensive language," he said Friday.
As in the past, posters will be required to provide their identity to Lancaster Newspapers when they register, although they still will be able to post their comments under a screen name.
But for the first time, Lancaster Newspapers will use a third-party verification service to make sure the identities are correct.
The identities will not be published, or sold or given to other firms or charities.
"This policy will protect the personal privacy of users while they are online, but still allow us to hold them accountable for the comments they make," Schreiber said.
In a second change, Lancaster Newspapers has established specific penalties for posters who write personal attacks, racist comments or ethnic slurs.
They'll lose their TalkBalk posting privileges for six months for a first offense; they'll be banned for good for a second offense.
Because of the verification service, a banned poster will not be able to return under a different name.
A third major change will allow all TalkBack readers — not just registered posters — to report abusive comments.
A "Report Abuse" link will appear beneath every post, and any reader will be able to click on it to flag a comment that they believe is inappropriate.
Decisions about whether to pull comments and impose penalties on users will be made by LancasterOnline's moderators.
"It's OK to say that an idea is foolish," Schreiber said. "It's not OK to say the guy who suggested the idea is a fool.
"We're not expecting people to have super-polite, always politically correct discussions," he said. "People can have robust, sharply worded exchanges of opinion.
"But we do expect them to stay away from personally insulting or disparaging each other."
Not all the TalkBack changes involve procedures. Some involve technology.
For instance, a mobile-phone-friendly version, designed to fit on a smartphone screen, also will be available for the first time starting Tuesday.
A free service, TalkBack has proven to be a popular forum.
At the time of the April 29 shutdown, it had 982 active, registered posters and drew thousands of hits each day, racking up more than 4 million page views per year.
TalkBack accounted for about 10 percent of all the traffic on LancasterOnline.
But Lancaster Newspapers, which also publishes this newspaper and the Sunday News, pulled the plug on 10-year-old TalkBack due to mounting complaints about the lack of civility by posters on the forum.
Harold E. Miller, president and chief executive officer of Lancaster Newspapers, said then:
"The blatant misuse of TalkBack continues and can no longer be tolerated. … It's been abused. It's gone. Whether it ever comes back again, we'll look and see."