Marking 20 years
of bold journalism,
reader supported.
Tyee News
Media

Goodbye Tyee Comments!

On Friday, comments will close. On Monday, something new.

Geoff D'Auria 24 Jun 2013TheTyee.ca

Geoff D'Auria is the front-page editor and web manager of The Tyee.

image atom
What's all the blub blub?

The Tyee comment section as you know it will go dark on Friday, just four days from now. Comments will still be visible but you won't be able to add any new ones. Not until Monday, July 1, anyway.

On Monday, a shiny new comment section will blink to life and a new era in Tyee commenting will begin.

Why are we telling you this now?

Because the sooner you create a new account, the better the chance you'll have to secure the user name you're currently using. And the sooner you create a new account, the sooner you can give us feedback in the preview window at the bottom of this story. More on that in a bit.

First, the new system. It's called Disqus and has a bunch of great features we hope you'll like and take advantage of, such as the ability to:

- Vote comments up or down and sort them based on that voting. Or not. That's right, no more Best or All distinctions made by Tyee editors. It's now a crowdsourced project and you're the crowd. (Did I just hear a soft "Huzzah!" from G West?)

- Get notifications when someone replies to your comment. Or not. (Depending on how you configure the communication settings.)

- Follow fellow commenters and see their message histories.

- See your own message history in one place.

- Use the "@" convention to refer to other commenters and have the system contact them when you've done so.

- Log in with your Facebook or Twitter credentials. Or not. Your call.

- Share a specific comment or an entire thread on Facebook or Twitter.

It's the same system Mother Jones, The Atlantic and National Public Radio (NPR) use in the U.S., not to mention The Telegraph in the U.K.

To give you a taste, we've turned off the regular comments on this story and inserted a preview window below. Give it a test drive. Kick the tires. Let us know how it handles. We need and appreciate your feedback.

What do you have to do?

Because this is a completely new system, it means you need to register again and create a new user name. Here are some basic instructions:

To register:

1. Scroll down this story to the new comments window.

2. Place your cursor in the box where it says "Leave a message....":

- If you already have a Disqus login, click the "D" icon and follow the on-screen prompts.

- If you just want to log in with your email, place your cursor in the Name box and follow the on-screen instructions.

- If you want to log in with Facebook, Google+ or Twitter, click the appropriate icon and follow the on-screen instructions. (You'll still have to create a Disqus account as part of the process.)

3. Come back to this page and leave us a comment.

That's it. Once you do this, you'll be ready for when the new system goes live on Monday.

At its most basic, it's essentially the same registration process we have now. The only personally identifiable piece of information required is your email address. We think this is a pretty good compromise in the ongoing online tension between the desire for anonymity and the need for civil discussion.

Some sites have gone the direction of no anonymity, forcing people to use their Facebook identities when commenting. That made us uncomfortable, not just because of Facebook's cavalier attitude towards privacy, but mainly because there are some legitimate times when allowing anonymous comments adds to the discussion (despite the risk that certain anonymous commenters become "the loudest drunk at the bar," as some have called it). The nice thing about Disqus is that it allows both.

Granted, it's not completely anonymous, in that Disqus and The Tyee have your email address. But other commenters will never see it.

Needless to say, all the same rules apply: don't use racist, sexist or homophobic language. Don't be a bully or a troll. Don't libel anyone. Treat each other with respect and, ideally, curiosity. In short, if the Internet is the playground of the id, don't be the jerk on the seesaw. We will continue moderating as usual, and there's still a flag to report comments as offensive.

Why now? Why this?

It's been five years since we launched our experiment with the Best and All threads. We think that, plus a more active approach to moderating, improved the tone of the discussion and, more importantly, made it a more inviting forum for those who might not ordinarily comment. We hope that was the case, anyways.

But the web has moved on. Conversations about our stories are happening elsewhere, like on the various social media channels, as much as on our site. This is great. But it felt like our commenting system, while fine for the basics, was competing rather than integrating with those other conversations.

At the same time, we were noticing that our commenting infrastructure, specifically, and our back-end systems, generally, were not aging gracefully and were becoming costly to maintain, keep up-to-date, and keep secure.

Disqus gives us more and better features for less money. We're hoping this turns into a win-win.

But, again, we need your feedback to make sure we're on the right track. As with everything we do, this is an experiment and we're in this petri dish together. So, please, scroll down and create a new account and tell us what you think.

Tomorrow we'll publish another story about comments, this one from our tech strategist, Phillip Smith, that takes a big picture look at comments past, present and future. On Wednesday and Thursday we'll publish stories on how to use specific features of the new system. Each of these will have the new commenting window for you to try out.

Remember, next weekend comments will be closed while we transition fully to the new system.

comments powered by Disqus

Read more: Media

  • Share:

Facts matter. Get The Tyee's in-depth journalism delivered to your inbox for free

LATEST STORIES

The Barometer

Do You Think Naheed Nenshi Will Win the Alberta NDP Leadership Race?

Take this week's poll