James Bond rarely bothers with fake names. When a villain asks his identity, he tells them the truth. He even gives his surname twice.

That's not a good idea if you want a long career in espionage.

Bond could learn a trick or two from some of the commenters on CTV.ca. Like secret agents, they disguise their political talking points to sneak them into totally unrelated stories.

That goes against our policy that comments "should be on-topic." We want to keep discussions on track, to foster meaningful debate on the issue at hand. When people try to get around this rule, they often get rejected.

"Nancy" will tell anyone who listens that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is up to no good. Some of our readers would agree, and her thoughts would be more than welcome on a political story. The problem, however, is that they're often directed elsewhere.

Last week, we ran a story about theories involving the "Lost" season finale. It was called "'Lost' piles on even more mysteries." You could submit your theories on the Smoke Monster (Babylonian monster or Egyptian god?), or whether one of the characters was a "charismatic Lucifer." For non-fans, you could complain the show was full of sound and fury.

Here's a comment from "Nancy," who gave her full name as "Nancy - Hoping for a Liberal Twist in new Show."

"The new series is called the Lost Liberals and may be a 'charismatic Lucifer Morningstar' in the flesh, searching for an image make over since losing to a leadership challenge but taking power later by a backroom deal to keep the inspiring real leaders out of the contest," she wrote.

We rejected that comment on the grounds it had nothing to do with the TV series "Lost." Undeterred, she tried again the same day on another non-politics story: "Bad boys don't always get the girl, study finds." It was about an anthropological study on the reproductive success rates of the Waorani people of Ecuador.

This time writing as "Nancy- Guys who just talk tough creep me out," she wrote: "Some guys just try and talk tough and just creep women out. Here's an example - "'To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.'"

If you're wondering about that quote, it's taken from a 2004 opinion piece Michael Ignatieff wrote for The New York Times Magazine. Taken out of context, as "Nancy" has done, it appears he's endorsing the use of Jack-Bauer-style tactics against terrorists.

But the 7,000-word essay, "Lesser Evils," is a warning against such measures. In the paragraph from which Nancy took her quote, Ignatieff writes that such tactics may result in "Pyrrhic victories." He concludes, in part: "Even terrorists, unfortunately, have human rights. We have to respect these because we are fighting a war whose essential prize is preserving the identity of democratic society and preventing it from becoming what terrorists believe it to be."

If you want to read the full article yourself, look to the right of this text under "Web Links." But "Nancy"'s comment, although misleading, was again rejected because it had nothing to do with the story.

That's an easy example. Here's a trickier one: This week many of us awoke to the news that Tori Stafford had been murdered. The little girl had been missing since April 8 in Woodstock, Ont., and police believe she was killed on that same day.

We had comments open on that story. "Alberta Believer" wrote a of couple posts, and like many he spoke about the horrific tragedy of the girl's death. But then he or she took the opportunity to express concerns about abortion and euthanasia.

We rejected that comment, deciding it was the wrong place for a debate about reproductive rights. But "Alberta Believer" also seemed to make the wider criticism that our society sometimes seeks to sanitize death, and whether that might influence the behaviour of a criminal. Was that relevant? Or was that also out of place?

It's a fine line we have to walk. If you think we went too far with "Nancy" and "Alberta Believer," or whether we've been successful at keeping discussions on track, please leave your comments below.