Aww, look, guys, the Washington Post’s ombudsman acknowledges that Post’s online comment sections are mostly “cesspools of venom and twaddle”! (Hey, admitting you have a problem is always the first step to recovery.) Ombud Andrew Alexander uses his Easter Sunday inches to wax about the cost of handing incredibly opinionated and usually misinformed individuals an anonymous megaphone with no consequences: Alexander admits that “[a]bout 300 comments are deleted each day” from the Post’s website — which, amazingly, is lower than I imagined — and that staff reporters are dealing with regret from story subjects who then have to digest the drivel launched at them from the peanut gallery. Alexander’s solution? An in-the-works tiered commenting system in which trusted commenters garner votes, and all first-time comments are screened by humans. Two thoughts: one, may the patience of Job be with the person who has to manually parse those first-time diatribes. Secondly, while the Post’s commenting section is pretty bad, at least it’s not the worst in the area — here’s looking at you, WTOP! — and it’s a good thing that the folks over at WaPo realize that their reporters probably have better things to do than spend their weekends cleaning up troll bait. All the more reason to be incredibly thankful for our wonderful commentariat, who have learned to self-police with parody and Simpsons references, just like a good commentariat should.