There's a place on the internet where residents of Montville go to talk about their town.

You won't be able to see it, though, unless you're one of its 2,500 members.

And even if you do get in, you could get kicked out for violating a rule or for angering one of the three moderators.

The Montville Community Forum group, one of the most hard-to-find public forums for Montville gossip, political banter and news, is one of dozens of groups on the social network that serve as weathermen, news services, business review sites and traffic alerts for people in seemingly every town in southeastern Connecticut.

Some towns have multiple groups, each maintained with drastically different rules about what kind of speech is allowed, what the moderators will delete and who controls the tone.

Much of the time people post about lost cats, plant sales or the weather.

But things can get nasty.

"There's a lot of people out there who have valid complaints and good opinions," said Joe Rogulski, a first-term Town Councilor who is a member of several of Montville's Facebook groups and posts occasionally.

"It’s the people that are insensitive that kind of ruin it for everyone," he said.

For the people who moderate the groups, "insensitive" is a subjective term.

Ledyard Town Council Chairman Linda Davis created the Ledyard Community Forum Facebook group five years ago.

She said she wanted a place where people who care about Ledyard could have conversations about issues affecting the town.

"I was looking for a little more dialogue back and forth," she said.

Davis runs a tight ship.

She's quick to delete any posts that constitute personal attacks or break one of the rules she's developed over the years.

"No politics," she said. "I don’t allow politics."

Criticism of local businesses also isn't allowed. Posts that advertise anything are limited to Wednesday mornings.

"My tolerance is very low," Davis said. "That’s the reason my group is in existence after five years."

The group is closed to non-members, and she monitors requests to join on a daily basis.

"I try to make it so it's (people who live in) Ledyard, people that have ever lived in Ledyard, and people that work in Ledyard," she said.

Davis said most of the feedback she gets is positive, but not everyone is happy.

"There have been a number of groups that have formed because people were not happy with my my low tolerance for behavior," she said.

That's what Harly Hewlitt did in Montville.

The 21-year-old, who has lived in Montville since she was 4, was banished from the Montville Community Forum group after she said she questioned the harsh and unpredictable policies of the moderators.

With two friends — Ashley Danao and Nicki Jackson— she formed a new group, Montville Community Forum Reunited, as a safe haven for people who wanted to talk to their neighbors, post photos of their pets and warn each other about traffic or emergency situations.

"We didn't really like the negativity that was going on," she said. "People would call each other cuss words, and just kind of personally attack each other. We were like, 'That doesn't seem like it's supposed to be that way.'"

The moderators of that group could not be reached for comment.

"What we were trying to accomplish is a place where people could discuss things and communicate like an adult," Hewlitt said.

For a little while, it worked.

But five weeks later, after several hundred people joined the group, former Republican Town Council member and mayoral candidate Thomas McNally posted in the group alleging that Town Councilor Laura Tanner, a Democrat, was not eligible for her seat because her house is in foreclosure.

One of the group's administrators deleted the post, but not before comments piled up underneath it.

Hewlitt said she never expected to be in a position to moderate that kind of conversation.

Before helping to start the group, she barely even knew anything about politics in her town, and had never really cared.

"I was 50/50 about it," she said. "I was learning about politics of the town as I was reading everyone's comments, and making sure everyone was the most polite they could be."

At the end of a special meeting of the Town Council that night, Tanner addressed the post in a statement, assuring the audience that she lives in Montville and that her personal life is none of their business.

By the time people were back home from the meeting, the argument had returned to Facebook.

Members of the group Hewlitt and her friends started to avoid "negativity" now hosted a frenzied debate over whether Tanner's personal life was fair game, and whether the conversation even belonged on Facebook.

Stephen Bessette, a former Stonington selectman who started that town's Facebook forum in 2014, said that's exactly what he has tried to avoid.

He started the Town of Stonington Community Forum to replace First Selectman Ed Haberek's Facebook page, which Haberek was using to post updates about storms, power outages and government issues alongside personal updates.

Bessette said he monitors peoples' posts by sending an email or message to people advising them about how they could write more clearly or make their point without insulting anyone.

"I don’t find myself getting into personal arguments," he said. "I find myself being the moderator."

One contributor got an email recently when her post didn't include any punctuation, he said.

"You didn’t put one period, one comma, one exclamation mark or anything," Bessette told her.

"Grammar to me is a reflection of who you are, of being able to articulate what you want to say," he said. "Some people just vomit all over the pages, and it's like, 'Did you really just write that?'"

But Bessette said he sees the way civil discourse in the U.S. is changing in the way Stonington residents interact with one another online.

"How do we as a community and ... a society communicate with each other these days?" he said. "Facebook has kind of taken over the world. It’s another way to kind of foster communication within the town and within the community."

Bessette said he draws the line at personal attacks. "We as a community and a country have gotten away form being able to discuss things in a civil tone."

But keeping a civil tone still sometimes means strict rules, Davis said.

A Facebook group may be free, but Davis won't allow people to say whatever they want.

"A lot of people think you have First Amendment right on Facebook, but you don’t," she said.

Plenty of members of Hewlitt's Facebook group in Montville would disagree.

After McNally's original post was deleted, along with several comments about a shooting death in Montville, the people of Montville Community Forum Reunited revolted.

"Deleting other people's opinions is NOT right," one person wrote. "To me being reasonable is being a grown up and not getting feelings hurt over every little thing."

By Monday, Hewlitt deleted the group entirely.

"The group hasn't been positive," she said. "People have been insulting each other over opinions. It was becoming everything we didn't want it to be."

Danao, 23, created a new group to replace it called Montville Community Forum Revamped. 

On Friday, it was renamed The Montville Buzz. Just over 185 people are members.

“I think it’ll definitely be more positive,” Danao said.

For now, both the original Montville forum and Danao's group are sticking to pets, babysitting ads and traffic updates.

And anyone not interested in civil discourse can join another group, specifically devoted to complaints in Montville, that has been on Facebook since the beginning of June.

Or, like many of the town's officials, they can stay away from the site entirely.

Neither Montville Mayor Ronald McDaniel or Town Council Chairman Joseph Jaskiewicz even has a Facebook account.

"I get enough emails," McDaniel said.

m.shanahan@theday.com

Editor's note: This story corrects an earlier version.