SOME of our readers have been complaining that they can’t comment on our story about the Chief Minister, Allan Bell, challenging Peter Karran to propose a vote of no confidence.
For reasons we don’t understand, this story would not allow comments, even when we tried to allow them ourselves a number of times. Our apologies for this.
{http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/bell-challenges-critics-to-a-no-confidence-vote-1-5614049|Click here to read the story}
Our IT people have looked at the situation and referred it to another company that investigates technical problems with Johnston Press websites. However, the service agreement with that company doesn’t include weekend work.
The newsroom at Isle of Man Newspapers became aware of the problem with comments on the story late on Friday afternoon.
Isle of Man Newspapers yielded to no pressure to suppress comments on the story, in spite of the beliefs of some posters on this site. There was never any pressure from anyone in government on this story anyway.
We suspect the technical glitch has something to do with the story being one of the first written into new templates for the new-look Manx Independent before being published online. We fear the template has been set up with a fault.
Regular readers will know that there are a number of stories that we don’t allow comments on. The vote of confidence story was not one of these.
We don’t allow comments on active court cases (when there’s a risk that a jury might be prejudiced) or stories where we judge there is a strong chance that we might be sued for defamation if we were to allow posters to comment anonymously.
If you’d like to comment on the vote of confidence story, please do so here.
We’d also be delighted to receive letters at opinionsATnewsiom.co.im for our letters pages.