Ariel Waldman is a prominent tech blogger and also the community manager at Pownce.  She has ignited a huge online debate about Twitter failing to police a harassing commenter at Twitter, comments that appear to have come from a person who had been harassing her for some time. 

I’ve really been leaning to her point of view though I’d like to see the dialog and I’d like to see the community working harder to make sure this type of abuse is dealt with more harshly.    Ariel seems to think Pownce does a great job here.

However, at Ariel’s own Pownce page commenters are calling Sarah Lacy the C** word, with only a small admonishment from Ariel and no removal of the comment.     Ariel can correctly say that ongoing harassment is a lot more serious than a “one off” insult, but the use of th c**  word plays heavily in her critique of Twitter’s response to her harassment.

The point here is NOT that Ariel is wrong here or that she should be banning everybody at Pownce that uses the c* word, though maybe that is a good idea as you can hardly make a case this noun can’t be replaced with less objectionable material to get any point across.   Ariel presumably has the power to ban comments and/or users as the community manager at Pownce.  

The point is that the community standards *including Ariel’s* are far too low.   Twitter is only a small part of the problem here.   The problem is … all of us, and only all of us can fix this.