Visitors to Bermuda.com's chat board will no doubt have mixed feelings about owner Tony Brannon's decision to close it down.

There have been times when postings were racist or offensive or both, exposing the weakness of Internet sites like this in screening just what gets said.

As Mr. Brannon has noted, unlike a newspaper, there is no editor reading the posts before they go up on the web although they were often removed soon after.

Like talk radio, the boards also face the problem of the same few people continually talking to each other. For those who read or listen but don't contribute, it's akin to listening to the same dinner table conversation again and again and again.

Be that as it may, it is always regrettable to see a forum where free speech flourishes shut down. If some of the views of Bermuda were negative - they were - shutting the forum won't make them go away and may make them harder to solve if they are not brought to the public attention.

Libellous or slanderous statements carry their own risks but it is up the libelled person to seek redress, not to simply shut the organ that carried them down.

Chat groups can be good community builders and places for healthy and honest dialogue. It is impossible to believe that in these days of high technology, it is not possible to hold postings until they have been read by an editor and then posted.

Instead, a place where people were able to vent, let off steam, and sometimes have misconceptions corrected has been lost and that's too bad.