The Washington Post recently shut off comments on its post.blog, following a flurry of angry ripostes to its ombudsman’s clumsy handling of complaints over the paper’s coverage of the Jack Abramoff affair. Commenting has been partly restored; you now have to e-mail your contributions, but no comments currently appear on any stories after the one that originally drew online fire.

To its credit, the Post held an online forum today to discuss how it handles blog comments. The discussion is largely civil (although executive editor Jim Brady still seems pretty chippy about it, and his wrapup doesn’t exactly sound like he found the conversation life-altering).

The participants often seem to talk past each other, but there are moments of keen insight into what makes blogs interesting, and what keeps online communities alive and vital.

The issue of how you handle flaming — and where (not to mention whether) you draw the line between passion and poison, anger and abuse, or vigorous comment and vitriol — is one that faces anyone hosting an online conversation. Whether you happen to have switched commenting on in your personal blog, or you’re running a major discussion forum with thousands of participants, sooner or later you’ll encounter people who vent their rage with furious insults and possibly violent rhetoric.

There are measures you can take, from the preventive (such as posting rules for participants) to the active (such as privately asking one or more participants to tone down their language) to the punitive (such as evicting a participant altogether).

But you’d do well to know in advance what tools you plan to use should things turn sour, and share that information with your community well in advance. That’s where the Washington Post failed badly; you can bet they’ll be trying to avoid that mistake in the future.