Like any anxious parents, we’re keenly aware of our offspring’s important milestones. First social media steps, first babbling twitter words, you know the kind of thing. Still, we were a little taken aback to have had our first solicitor’s letter yesterday. Excuse us for sounding like the gossiping school gate mafia, but, my, hasn’t our little one grown? Don’t you think? So advanced, and only six months old.

Seemed like such an obvious, innocuous observation for us to post: Leaf has moved from the Baltic. That’s a serious blow to the area. Let’s hope they do well in their new location.

Not so. For whatever reason, we opened up a viper’s nest - and the comments came pouring in. And not all of them were concerned with the provenance of Leaf’s jasmine buds.

Like any site, when we opened ours up for comments, we knew that things could get heated. You’ve only got to look at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free to see that. But we were hoping that we’d encourage a fair, lively and meaty conversation. Which we have.

We’re also aware that, as the site is something we do outside of our 9 to 5, we couldn’t afford to be sitting with our fingers on the delete trigger all day long.

We’ve never needed to. Until yesterday. In the past, even our most controversial pieces (and there have been, ahem, a few) have been taken in good sport. Management companies, Boards of Directors, interested parties: everyone who we’ve had a pop at has used our free and open comments section to respond. And we’ve given them a full and unedited platform on which to do so. That’s the marker of a healthy, and democratic environment. Ironically, we weren’t having a pop at anyone this time! (phew!)

We’re not a huge, faceless multinational. We’re just three blokes. Comment is free. Solicitors cost. And we don’t have solicitor money.

So, in the face of letters from Hill Dickinson, on behalf of the Elevator landlords, requesting the email details of one of our posters (which we are unable to do), we decided to pull down the comments section of the leaf story. Ironically, we’d already removed the ‘offending’ few lines relating to the solicitor’s clients before their letter arrived. We run a lively house, but we try to keep it fair. No names, no personal accusations - even if those supporting the other party threw the first stone.

Just so everyone’s clear, the High Court ruled that comments on bulletin boards are akin to slander, rather than libel. Mr Justice Eady commented: ”When considered in the context of defamation law, therefore, communications of this kind are much more akin to slanders (this cause of action being nowadays relatively rare) than to the usual, more permanent kind of communications found in libel actions…People do not often take a ‘thread’ and go through it as a whole like a newspaper article. They tend to read the remarks, make their own contributions if they feel inclined, and think no more about it.”

We really don’t want to be in the business of doing either. But it would be a shame if, because of this incident, we felt we couldn’t even facilitate a serious conversation.

So, we’re sorry we closed the comments section. Now, can we talk?