As a Worcester News reader before becoming a Worcester News writer I knew there were many online comments which slated the paper, the writers or those who were featured in stories.

What I didn’t realise is just how relentless it is, so much so, myself and my colleagues agree our view of people has been considerably changed.

Although we like to believe everyone is inherently good, it does seem that all it takes is the tiniest bit of anonymity and some people turn into absolute savages.

In my short time working for the newspaper I cannot remember a day when I wasn’t publicly humiliated. It is not criticism. We can all take criticism, we put our work out there to be judged and we expect people to judge it, to question it, to nitpick. It is part of the job.

What gets me is how spiteful and personal it can become. Somehow when I am sat at my keyboard and others are sat at theirs - communicating via a comments section - simple decency seems lacking.

We deal with it. It is now part of the job, but what I find really difficult is seeing people who speak out via their local newspaper get torn apart by our readers. If you are featured in the Worcester News is it right for you to face a barrage of abuse from anonymous commenters?

I wonder when that became acceptable? When publicly attacking someone for where they live, what they look like, where they work or for their opinions because they differ to yours snuck in.

It is our responsibility to monitor and delete abusive comments from our website, and it is, and we do, but we can’t control what goes on social media - and why should we?

Why do fully some grown adults need to be warned or told off for being abusive bullies - this isn’t high school. They should know better!

Of course, this isn’t everyone.We do occasionally get positive, supportive comments. A brave few even stick up for us when we are being attacked unfairly for doing our job.

To those people - we applaud you, you have no idea how much your kind words mean to us.

We will never get rid of our comment section because it allows us to connect with you - and the abuse, well unfortunately I'm not sure we will ever get rid of that either.