My daughters and I made our twice-annual pilgrimmage to central Pennsylvania last (long) weekend, to see my parents, sisters and my nieces and nephews.

It's always interesting for me to return to my hometown (Sunbury), my home state and compare and contrast that area to the state where I've lived since 1995 (I lived in Florida from 1989-95; lived in Pennsylvania before then).

As you may have noticed, starting today we are taking a different tack with readers who post online comments at kjonline.com and onlinesentinel.com.

Comments no longer are automatically visible at the bottoms of our stories and updates. If you want to read the comments, you must click on a line that takes you to them. This is a conscious, deliberate choice that readers will make to see the comments. We expect that adding this step will reduce the number of readers who are upset by what our post-ers write.

Here's your chance to weigh in on a change we're considering to our Web sites. We have had some -- not many, really -- complaints about the reader comments attached to the bottom of articles and columns at our sites. Some people think they are tasteless. Some people -- local leaders, especially -- don't like the anonymity, and the perceived cheap shots.

Personally, I think they are usually OK. If there is a universal target of our posters' ire, it's our newspapers or me -- and we can take it. (We take down obvious examples of hate speech or defamation.) Gov. John Baldacci is probably a close second in terms of wearing a bulls-eye and he hasn't complained yet.

Here's the change we are considering regarding reader comments:

Do you see how, at the end of a story, there is a line to click on if you want to make a comment? We are thinking about making you click a similar line if you want to read the reader comments. In other words, you won't just read an article to the end any more and see the reader comments right there. You'd have to make a decision, and click on something to "see reader comments." If you do -- well, that was your call. If the comments disturb you, don't click there any more.

Do you want us to make this change? I am going to leave this blog up all week to gather your feedback. Your comments will matter. You can post a reader comment on this blog or e-mail me directly at: econrad@centralmaine.com