I say it so often, but not nearly enough: The thing I most treasure about This Little Business is the user community that's developed -- And when people ask about our "competitive advantage," I'm as apt to talk about our comment boards as I am our latest widget. After all, where else will you find such well-thought out discussion, on-topic, often informative, and occasionally involving the very subjects of a given story?

But I've seen a new trend that troubles me a bit. PegNews seems to attract a pretty open-minded lot, but when that group encounters someone new with dramatically differing points of view, the minds close and the community sometimes closes ranks on the newbie.

I'm not saying everyone should agree -- or that all user comments have equal value. But I would ask that we all try to refrain from piling on folks with whom some (or even most) disagree. In the past couple weeks, I've seen two new users join and within a few days ask to have their accounts shut down. In both cases, I'll concede that the users took some unusually hardline positions. In the first case, the user even apologized and toned it down a bit, but was almost literally chased away on other threads.

I'd really appreciate it if everyone -- particularly our regulars -- would take some pains to give new folks a little latitude as they learn what we're about here. I'm not suggesting that we not discuss and debate, but let's keep the level of civility high. The more people who use our site, and the greater the diversity of opinion, the better it will be. That's not to say that we're going to allow disruptive commenters. We've banned users before and will surely do it again.

I'm just saying that we should make an effort to help people learn to become contributing users before we run 'em out of town on a rail.