We at Insideschools face a mighty task — keeping up with all the city schools.

If we visited one school every school day, it would take us nearly 10 years to get to all 1,700 of them. Increasingly we depend on the  Insideschools community — public school parents, students and educators-- to let us know what’s happening. What did we get right, what didn’t we get right? What’s changed since our visit? Our paid staff consists of two full-time editors, plus freelance writers and part-time reporters, and we can't do it alone.

Nearly a year ago we opened up the comments section to all comers. Users no longer have to register to post a comment on our school profile pages. That change was exciting because it meant that many, many more people posted comments. We set simple guidelines: Be civil. No curse words. No insults. If something is going wrong at the school, give a concrete example. “This schools sucks” just doesn’t work for us.”

Unless our spam filter catches an especially egregious comment (usually because it contains a curse word or a web link) user comments are posted immediately. Do we catch all of the nasty comments? No. Have we had users post repetitive unsavory remarks that stay up on the site for hours? Yes. Can we hire someone to monitor the comments 24 hours a day? No.

Is there a better way to do this? Maybe. That's what we'd like to know.

This week our poll question is: What’s the best way to deal with comments? Take our poll and give us your feedback please.