An Evening of Solidarity and Reflection, While Trying to Clean up our Online Comments Sections Going Forward

A recap of our recent reporting plus bonus content.

Apr 18, 2025

We wanted to thank everyone who showed up for our documentary film, zine distribution and panel discussion earlier this week, to mark 10 years of Our Town Reno as a volunteer run, multimedia, hyperlocal, experimental storytelling initiative with occasional live events.

It was so gratifying to see so many people pack into the cozy Holland Project where people kept arriving and questions kept being asked to think about and discuss how to make Reno a healthier, greener and more caring place.

At the end of the q and a, one local asked what 30 minutes the panelists would add and subtract from their lives if they could, and many answered time spent looking at social media.

While much of our work is done via these powerful communication tools, there is nothing like an in person event to make new connections and to have compassion for others.

The occasional flood of vile comments on our posts is something we struggle with as we’ve kept seeing our online presence grow in recent years, where we want to allow free speech to flourish, but we must put some lines out with bans and restrictions when these are crossed into despicable, demeaning and specifically targeted hatred.

With Facebook, the way it’s set up, sometimes we can’t even find comments in which we are tagged ourselves, and there and on other platforms we don’t read all the comments, as that would take away from our valuable available reporting time. If there are comments that are particularly egregious never hesitate to message us directly or via ourtownreno.com/contact so we can look into these and take necessary action to make our comment sections less toxic, while still allowing locals to speak out.

It’s a nature of social media, which has such potential in eliminating prior gatekeeping, while also having its risks of mob mentalities.