Poll: Should the City's Facebook Page Allow Comments?

Dave Sparks logged onto Monrovia's Facebook page Monday to voice his displeasure about another Jack in the Box coming to town. Soon after, his comments posted to the page were deleted.

The city has not allowed comments on its Facebook page since it was set up, but a glitch has prevented officials from banning comments outright. Instead, they have had to manually delete the comments when they come in, city spokesman Dan Bell said.

Bell stressed that all comments are deleted no matter their content.

"Positive or negative, we just don't want comments," Bell said. "It's been that way since the start."

Sparks said that the city is hardly using social media very socially by keeping comments off the page.

"This strikes me as a very sad state of affairs for the city to be silencing its own citizen's opinions," Sparks wrote in an email. "I can understand having someone moderate the feeds to get rid of spam or overly aggressive posts, but it seems that any and all comments are deleted."

Bell said that the city does not have the resources to monitor and respond to comments on the page and has always intended for it to be used as a "one-way" form of communication. He said very few cities he's aware of allow comments on their Facebook pages.

"It was not set up to be back and forth comment," Bell said. "We don't have anybody sitting here to answer questions."