We have embraced this brave new world of open, direct and immediate conversations with you, our readers. And you're making us just a little nervous.

We have received several emails in the last couple of days from readers expressing concern about the tone of some of the comments being posted on links to our news stories.

Some are concerned about the profanity. Some are concerned about the content of some of the comments.

First, let's back up a little.

We are, as far as we can tell, one of the few (if not only) newspaper websites that allows comments on all our news stories. You can come online, click on Comments at the end of the story and let fly with your opinion. There is no filter between you and publication of your comments.

That's the way we wanted it.

We do not want to be your nanny.

We want this to be your conversation, not ours.

And you have taken to it. With no promotion, the Comments took off on the first day and have been steady for the past three weeks, exploding during the three-day period around the killing of the tiger in Moorpark when we received almost 1,000 comments.

We noticed immediately that some of you are unable to put together a sentence without using a profanity. We don't tolerate obscenities.

We believe civil people can have civil conversations using civil language.

So we decided to monitor for obscenities and remove them. The software we use doesn't have a filter, so our online editor must look at the comments and individually remove the obscene ones. That sometimes takes a little time. And sometimes we miss a few. We're looking for alternatives.

We also drew the line at defamation. No personal attacks.

Some of you are complaining about some of the racist, xenophobic comments that have been appearing.

"As a paying subscriber, I would request that the Star establish some posting protocol in order to elevate the level of discussion to issues as opposed to ignorant stereotypes," wrote one reader.

Today we posted broad rules at the top of each Comments section.

But we are not going to go in and remove opinion from the postings simply because we disagree with it. We may not like the tone. We may not like the conclusion being drawn. We may believe it is hurtful and represents a very small minority of our community. But it's an opinion.

Besides, you, the other readers, seem to be doing a wonderful job of monitoring the outrageous opinions on your own. That's what we want. We want you to step up, speak out, and tell them (in a civil way) that racism is not tolerated in this county. It doesn't have a place here.

But sometimes we need to be reminded that an evil exists before it can be extinguished.

Meanwhile, we will consider this a work in progress. The rules may change. We want you involved in setting those rules.