We, the undersigned, petition D Magazine and its founder, Wick Allison, to cease comment deletion without explanation, and to cease unnecessary comment deletion.

As an arm of the Fourth Estate, D Magazine of Dallas, Texas, should embrace and uphold the tenets of free speech, while also making sure its participants comment responsibly. While we recognize that the task is daunting, we think it can be remedied by simply telling the readers why a particular comment was deleted, perhaps in the exact place it was located before deletion.

Other more blog and comment bloated organizations are capable of doing this. Free software even exists to manage comments, so even the recreational blogger can police ones blog of objectionable material without rendering other, more thoughtful responses obsolete in the process.

On many days, the comments section of Frontburner is more bustling than the actual posts put up by staff. Such robustness leads to page views and hits for your Web site. Don't turn off your regular, well-written respondents with such capricious deletions.

Thank you.