There were charges of tenuous out-of-bounds markers and a few threads expressing a variant view to my letter.

In fairness, I must say that a majority of the online forum participants are fair and keep to the theme, whether in concurrence or in refutation.

This is what makes the forum what The Straits Times means it to be - before it was turned, by a minority, into a chatroom featuring challenges flying all over the place hitting out at adverse views.

This creates bedlam because the topic in question is what the letter writer said, not what another person said in reply to another reply.

To address another commenter, or a few other commenters, is to create a tower of Babel, so to speak, where the main topic gets mired in a multitude of tangential topics.

This is what The Straits Times Online Forum wished to cancel. If netizens wish to expound on a topic, there is always a forum to which one can write - as I do, under my own name - to air views.

The views are not denotative and at most times they will be connotative in quintessence, but the chance to put one's thoughts before others, in the spirit of an exchange of views, benefits everyone.

It is in this perspective that the ST online forum has issued the warning - not to curb dissenting views, but to curb coarse or improper language.

Such behaviour cannot be excused or brushed off as freedom of speech. If it could, there would be no such thing as slander or defamation in law.

In delivering judgment in a case about an amendment to the Bill of Rights concerning freedom of speech in the United States Supreme Court, Justice Black said: 'It is a myth to believe one can say what one likes, when one likes, and where one likes.'

Any netizen has the opportunity to present his or her refutation in full. I too am subject to the stipulated rules of the ST online forum, which require my real name, address, and essential particulars.

The idea is to have a place where there can be an exchange of views. These views need not be concurrent with other views. If they were, there would be no need for a forum.

I suggest netizens read the reply from Dr Carol Tan, Ministry of Community Development, Youth & Sports, to Ms. V. J. Rozario's letter of 13 Feb.

The point was made with politeness and without resorting to coarseness or sarcasm. An online commenter, in antithesis, said to Ms Rozario; take two jobs and you have to pay for what you want.

Ms Rozario did not deserve such an unfeeling comeback. This is the kind of comment the ST online forum wishes to remove.

I urge the ST forum to stick with its stance. Netizens are welcome to expound their views on what appears in the forum or on world events. Why grouse about the warning? The ST Forum page offers you the same platform. There is no discrimination.

Dudley Au