.

To clarify the points that have been raised in recent days here:

Registered users of TheBeijinger.com are able to edit and delete their own reviews. They can do this at any time and for whatever reason motivates them to.

Here's how: While logged in, click on your own username (on the homepage, or as it appears below your avatar on any posts you have made). You'll be taken to your profile page. Click on the "My Reviews" tab. You'll be presented with a list of all the reviews you've posted to date. To the right of each item there'll be both an "edit" button and a "delete botton." The following message appears at the top of the list:
"Your reviews are shown below. If you wish to edit or delete one of your reviews, click the "Edit" or "Delete" link for the review. Deleting your review will remove it from the system completely."

The user ting.ting was therefore able to delete their own posts on The James Joyce. They were able to do this alone and without the help of any member of the Beijinger's staff.

A member of the Beijinger's staff with the appropriate admin privileges can delete a reader review that contains bigotry of a racial or religious nature, or if a review is obviously fake. Otherwise our staff do not delete reviews. We've never been in the business of cover-ups, and we have no intention of going that way now.

Finally, in February 2010, ting.ting entered our "Food Fight" contest, and was eventually selected as one of three winners of ski passes to Nanshan ski resort. This much is true. However, the allegation that ting.ting's win in this contest was a result of anything more than them writing a review that amused somebody is wide of the mark. Nevertheless, all this keeps us on our toes.

RightPryce,

I should have been clearer on this first time around.

With regard to comments on User Reviews:

Users are able to delete their own User Reviews.

Users are also able to edit their own replies to another person's User Review. Here's how it's done:

Below your own comments (for example, the comments above on this page), at the bottom of the comment box, you should see three icons:
"edit"
"reply"
"report spam"

(Below another user's comments, only the "reply" and "report spam" icons will be displayed - users can only edit their own comments, nobody else's.)

Click on "edit," and a new screen should open up allowing you to make changes to your comment - including being able to delete text.

You can therefore effectively remove the text of your comment (with at least one character remaining), but cannot delete the comment box itself.

Ting ting was therefore able to edit their own comment. They did not need and certainly did not receive the help of any member of the Beijigner's staff.

With regard to the Nanshan ski vouchers that Ting Ting won in a contest:
Prizes are managed and distributed by the Beijinger's marketing department.

Staff are not allowed to enter and win prizes in our competitions, but beyond that any reader or user of TheBeijinger.com is free to enter our competitions.

Of course, it's policy that we do not intentionally hand prizes out to people we know. We have always stuck to this policy and continue to do so - it's something we take very seriously.

The marketing team keeps track of who is winning to make sure that the same people are not winning contests repeatedly. But they do not know who every winner is personally - they cannot possibly prevent people who other staff know from winning contests from time to time. The marketing staff do not and cannot possibly know everyone who our editors, designers, photographers and sales people know, nor do they have time to run exhaustive checks on who every prize winner is.

This is compounded by the fact that many users of TheBeijinger.com do not use their real names. People use all kinds of names, male, female, Chinese, non-Chinese and so on.
From that basis, it's pretty impossible for marketing staff to keep track of who each user is. It would be ridiculous if they expected a Chinese person to collect a prize just because their username sounded like a Chinese name.

Finally, the vast majority of prizes are sent out by kuaidi - therefore the marketing staff do not come into contact with most prize winners.

Therefore, with regard to "ting ting," our marketing team could not possibly have jumped to any conclusions about who Ting Ting was or was not - unless they knew them personally.

As it is, the marketing staff who would have been responsible for this contest have now moved on, so we can offer no further comment or speculation on this matter.