When the words "COMMENT REMOVED" started popping up on websites carrying stories about a lack of French at the Olympics, Keith Bilous' employees were hard at work.
Bilous employs a silent army of moderators who weigh each word sent in by readers for illegal invective, needlessly profane posts or inanely offensive commentary.
His workers at ICUC Moderation Services, which manages comment at globeandmail.com, were busy last week after the Olympian French flap.
More and more Canadians going online for news expect to be able to interact with the stories they read by posting responses and engaging fellow readers in a dialogue.
Many of them are angry, and their pique can be offensive to the experienced eyes of his moderators.
"They feel that they are just greasy and slimy because of all the crap they have to read," says Bilous, president of ICUC.
"There is a lot crap the regular public doesn't have to read because we don't put it up."
Moderators and web editors are often the first to wade into the fray on the day's most controversial stories.
Some stories are expected to unleash intense reader commentary. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament in late December, for example, triggered an overwhelming reader response. But so did reporting on the Canadian Medical Association's call for a ban on pets in airliner cabins.
Readers are provoked into bashing out reactions on stories from across the country. But the moderators might actually be thousands of kilometres away in a distant country. ICUC has staff in Europe, the United States and across Canada.
They sit at their laptops and scour user-generated comments for red-flag content.
And there was no shortage of that kind of vitriol this week.
A single story on cbc.ca - on Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser's investigation into the opening ceremonies of the Olympics - attracted more than a thousand comments within a day of its posting.
Bilous attributes a lot of the ugliness found online to the anonymous nature of virtual self-expression.
"Behind the anonymity of commenting, people hate others. It is disgusting."
Not everyone who visits a news site leaves a comment. Statistics kept by the CBC show the web story about Fraser's investigation into the opening ceremonies drew nearly 40,000 hits - a healthy number, but not overwhelming.
The discrepancy between the statistics and the subjective tone of online comments can make it difficult to assess how much a particular issue is really resonating with Canadians. It also can obscure the reality that many comments reflect the views of a small but vocal minority.
The front-line manager for thestar.com says a lot of comments related to the Olympic language issue had to be removed from the site because they were off-topic, not overly offensive.
Still, Marissa Nelson says those trying to post offensive generalizations about Quebeckers or French speakers on the Toronto Star's website will have their remarks censored.
"I'm not interested in having people drive by and spray graffiti on the walls," she said.
"I'm more interested in people who want to come here for a sense of community and conversation and that (is) what I want to foster."
More and more online readers means a corresponding increase in commentary on news websites. The volume has increased every year, occasionally increasing from month to month, since Bilous started ICUC in 2002.
Comments spike during normal working hours when most Canadians are at their workplace and drop off during holidays, he said.
"I would be really intrigued to see what the productivity is like across the government and across a lot of organizations because of how many people (at work) are actually commenting on news stories."