Re: Moderation
"May I suggest that comments on this thread be moderated, so as to avoid all the unnecessary, uninformative, unhelpful, hurtful, disrespectful, and frankly childish sniping at the subject of this story?"
Back up.
If you don't want to read unhelpful, sniping, childish, disrespectful posts then don't read the comments section. Because that's kind of what we do, generally.
Just because the subject of the article elicits a degree of sympathy in you it doesn't warrant the mods stepping in and censoring anything 'unhelpful'. We're regularly up to the waist in offensive, unhelpful comments, misogyny and Joey Deacon gags*, yet I've never seen you wading in and asking for us to be nice before. That either means that you're new or that you believe it's fine to rip on things that you want to rip on, but somehow the object of your sympathy is a sacred cow.
It's not like anything or anyone else is a sacred cow here and immune from passing comment on, nor have they ever been (and I'm pretty sure that if they were then we'd be making comments about pepper sauce). I wouldn't like to see the yellow cards dished out on the basis of some very light banter which would pass without comment on any other thread, at the expense of anyone else.
*Remember those, eh. Jumpers for goalpoasts, sixteen nil the score and Dangermouse on thetele.