The eagle-eyed among you will have already spotted that our comments pages have had a bit of a makeover – but the changes we’ve made are not just aesthetic.
We know that you, valued reader, come to our sites primarily to read the news; we also know that many of you enjoy seeing what other people think about the news.
If you’re one of those people who heads straight to the comment section, then you’ll be happy to hear that our new commenting platform comes with a host of new features, the most significant of which is the introduction of moderation.
- We’ll be using software to help in the moderation process; comments that are insulting, abusive, bigoted, obscene or threatening will be automatically blocked.
- A team of human moderators will continuously monitor comments and ensure that anything that slips through the software net is dealt with appropriately.
- We’ll continue to uphold our community rules, which you can read here; these haven’t changed but will now be enforced more proactively.
- We have better tools to deal with people who break the rules.
- Individual readers can hide comments and block other commenters from their personal view.
- The best comments will be highlighted, so you can easily find the most interesting ones.
- You’ll be able to follow people and stories that interest you and get alerts when new comments are posted.
- Subscribers and newsroom staff will be highlighted in the comments with badges.
We’ve done all this by partnering with Viafoura, an industry-leading website comments platform.
Senior editor Simon Murfitt said: “We encourage all our readers to have their say and be part of the conversation about our stories.
“A thriving comments community is as important to our website as reader letters are in the newspaper.
“They can offer a different perspective, fostering positive engagement and thoughtful debate.
“However, we also know that a minority of people abuse the comments facility by leaving insulting or inappropriate messages and ruin the conversation for everyone.
“Our moderators will ensure our comments are well policed so they can be a place where readers know they can debate and discuss the news in safety.”
Our primary goal is to encourage more meaningful, insightful and interesting conversation, both between readers and with our own journalists in the newsroom.
We value your feedback, and of course it’s easy for you to let us know what you think by joining us in the comments on this article. We’ll see you there!
