“Please be quite nice to all, thank you,” – Luke Larkin
By Andrew Harris
Since late 2024, things have changed. No one can deny that the re-election of President Trump has ushered in rapid, real change. Regardless of your opinion, we all agree that to quote Bob Dylan, “Things Have Changed.”
One clear change has been the popularity of our Facebook page. Ask any user of this vice, the Wellsville Sun page suddenly changed, and not for the better.
Thousands of comments have been logged in that last week alone, from locals and mysterious “trolls,” who may or may not be real humans.
If we categorize all of the comments made on our Facebook page as positive or negative, then we are projecting a big fat negative cloud of nastiness. Eighty percent are negative, many include vulgar language or memes, many use labels and degradations.
In response to the complaints received and the general conflict with our mission:
1- Any post made to our Facebook pages which includes vulgarity or vulgar graphic representations will be deleted and the user removed from the page This site is for high school kids and grandmothers and people who just don’t want to read cuss/curse/swear/bad/dirty words.
2- Name calling, slurs, and general nastiness will not be tolerated. Anyone engaged in any form of bullying will be deleted and removed from the page.
3- Trolls and folks with monikers and unnamed profiles: Just stop, We will block you if we suspect you are a fake or fictious profile.
For the vast majority of our little Facebook village, 11,000+ strong, the comments can be very interesting, very insightful, and a place to be heard. For the very small minority, it is a place to attempt to overwhelm, bully, and shock others into silence. Many locals are convinced not to make comments, let alone submit formal opinion pieces, because of the potential onslaught from the Facebook/Twitter/Whatever mob.
This stifles free thought and the exchange of ideas in small communities.
For our Facebook pages we want decorum, intellectual debate, lots of positive stuff. The negative, aggressive, vulgar bully is not going to ruin that.
Please use our contact form to report the meme bullies, the nasty nancies, the troubled trolls.