Due to the nature of what has been happening with The Green Carnation Longlist post and its comments we have been asked by one of the authors discussed to take down the anonymous negative comments regarding them. We have also spoken with the judges and decided if we are to do that then we should also take the negative comments regarding the prize and its judges off the site… so there are now a lot less comments all in all!

We had really hoped for an enlivened debate on the longlist and discussion that we could all get involved in. However these comments have become derogatory to the judges (who have invested hours of their free time), some authors and indeed the prize itself and so now all comments will need to be approved before being shown on the site full stop.

Moderating the site and its up keep takes time and no one is being paid to keep this running. So if comments keep on arriving of the same nature this will simply have to become a ‘comment free’ site – which would be a shame as we do want to discuss the long list with you and the prize as it goes forward.

It’s rather sad that a prize which has been started in order to celebrate gay authors and gay writing has already been made slightly murky by some negative and hurtful comments to several parties. This was meant to be done in the spirit of community and sadly it seems some people in that community want to see it collapse because people they love didn’t get long listed. Shouldn’t we be celebrating was HAS been put through and mentioning what we would have liked to have seen on the list in a civil calm way without negativity?

It’s been a weird week since the long list was announced, so we are now drawing a line under it.

In other news we are very excited as it looks like The Green Carnation Prize 2011 is going to be even bigger and better than this year, more on that in the months to come.

Many thanks

The Green Carnation Team