Sky News last night closed down its website’s discussion boards claiming that debate on the platform had been reduced to “meaningless abuse”.

In a post Simon Bucks said that although the boards were “very popular” they had been hijacked by a small number of people.

At Sky News we welcome robust debate about the news, but we want it to be of a high standard. I am afraid that too often on the discussion boards threads which started intelligently would degenerate into mindless name calling.

If you want to contribute to the broad debate, you can still post comments on news stories and on blogs. In addition we intend to run more web chats like the ones last week with our correspondents Alex Crawford and Stuart Ramsay and will develop other ways of allowing intelligent debate about current events.

To those who used the discussion forums sensibly and did not abuse them, or other users, I can only apologise. A small number of people have spoiled it for the majority.