At The New York Times, a moderator must approve each comment before it appears online, encouraging germaneness while discouraging the rabble-rousing of “flamers.” The time lag before comments appear discourages highly referential back-and-forths.

On The Caucus, the paper’s main political blog, editors are constantly walking the tightrope between moderation and censorship. “Do you just let some of this up online so people understand that there are a lot of prejudices are out there?” asks Kate Phillips, the Times’ online politics editor. “It is a struggle for all of us to figure out how much do you permit to permeate the space you’ve created that is supposed to be respectful, but not dominated by the PC police.”

At the left-leaning HuffingtonPost.com, which got 600,000 comments last month, the site has a paid staff of 30 full-time and part-time moderators who work in shifts around-the-clock to filter each blog comment. They also “post-moderate” the comments attached to news stories appearing on the site.

While there are certain computer technologies that can flag inappropriate comments based on key words, Huff Post Editor in Chief Arianna Huffington says that it still requires a human eye to keep the comments in line with her site’s posting policies.

“There are certain obvious things we have, certain specific things,” says Huffington. “Conspiracy theories — we don’t allow conspiracy theories. If you thought Sept. 11 was caused by the Bush administration, your comment is not going to appear unless it is a mistake.”

“Once it is clear that everything is moderated,” she said, “a lot of trolls disappear.”

Not surprisingly, there are those bloggers and administrators who have simply tired of the struggle and done away with comments altogether. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder is one, having gotten rid of his comment section, reinstated it and then finally excised it for good.

“I don’t get comfortable censoring speech, even if it is offensive, and there is no need for me to subject myself to those decisions,” Ambinder says.

The ever-increasing volume of comments has had a vaguely anesthetizing effect for readers and writers, newbies and veterans alike.

“I’m not sure what good hundreds of thousands of comments or message boards do for anybody,” says Artley. “I have never known anybody to just read through all of that and think it’s worth revisiting. It’s our job as editors to find a better solution.”

Layne, though, isn’t sure news outlets will keep giving them a forum to talk to one another: “I think it will become a crazy memory that a paper like The New York Times was letting any dingbat come in and write [almost] anything on its website.”