The importance of rigorous moderation has been made obvious, not because we want to spoil any body’s fun, but rather because we want Crikey blogs to hold some sort of high moral and intellectual ground when it comes to the ofttimes murky nether land of the comments string.

We are not an open channel. We want a curated discussion, one that advances the topic at hand. I think, through admittedly accidental and unfortunately clumsy means, that that is where we’re heading. Look at today’s exchanges on Pure Poison, a truly elevated and thoughtful filleting of an issue. Shows what might be done here.

That all makes a certain amount of sense now.

Responding to suggestions that 800 staff positions would be lost across News Limited publications in Australia, Mr Hartigan said: “That’s a ridiculous number to bandy around.”

The information came from crikey.com.au, which Mr Hartigan described as “not the most credible source going around”.

Just remind me, who is John Hartigan again? Oh yeah, the guy that publishes the febrile rantings of Andrew Bolt, Piers Ackerman and Janet Albrechtsen. A byword for credibility and incisive commentary: check this.

Anyway, we prefer to be thought of as ‘usually reliable’. And we’ll just keep an eye on the exits.

In cyberspace, he says, “the response spreading fastest and furthest is flat-out denial”:

The most popular article on the Guardian’s website last week was the report showing that 2008 is likely to be the coolest year since 2000(1). As the Met Office predicted, global temperatures have been held down by the La Nina event in the Pacific Ocean. This news prompted a race on the Guardian’s comment thread to reach the outer limits of idiocy. Of the 440 responses posted by lunchtime yesterday, about 80% insisted that manmade climate change is a hoax.

I think we now guess at the bulk of Andrew Bolt’s content tomorrow.

Crikey – and me personally – has copped a lot of blogosphere heat for running a poll to name the Obama puppy that included the candidate A Mongrel Called Trig. It was a reader suggestion, and it somehow made our shortlist, and then hopped onto the polling page. From there it was just a hop skip and a jump to the outraged comment strings of Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and others.

There’s not a lot of love in those rooms.

We deserve our lumps here. There was no redeeming – or even comic – feature to what is just a dumb slur on an innocent child. The galling part of course, is giving ammunition to the billious rabble of the blogging far right. But what can you say when you’re so obviously in the wrong. Other than “I was wrong.” Which I was.

As I say, cop your lumps, learn your lesson and move on.