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Thursday, December 01, 2011

Law - NY Times introduces a new reader comments system

This Nov. 29th ILB entry remarked on the Indianapolis Star's new public comment policy, which now requires that a reader be registered with Facebook to either post or read comments to Star stories.

Today the NY Times also has introduced a new reader comment system:

Today we are introducing enhancements to our comment system to improve the community experience across NYTimes.com.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is an entirely new design, which for the first time brings our readers’ comments onto the same page as the article or blog post. This improves the old system, which relegated them to a separate page.

We are also adding new functions. Comments are now threaded, giving readers the ability to respond to one another. In addition, we’ve added tie-ins to social media: comments, both yours and others', can now be shared to Twitter and Facebook.

And finally, we are introducing a program for “trusted” commenters -- those who have maintained a history of posting outstanding comments on the site. Submissions from these members of our community will not be moderated in advance. Trusted commenter status is offered by invitation only. (Read more about this program.)

We look forward to hearing from you. Please leave your reactions and questions about the new system in the thread below. We’ll do our best to respond to as many as possible.

Jill Abramson, Executive Editor

For details see the FAQ here. Note that in order to become a "Trusted Commenter" (by invitation only, unmoderated comments), the Times writes:
"#4. We require you to connect your Facebook account and your commenting profile to verify your name and location."
Apparently Facebook has become the defacto web standard for verifying identities.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 1, 2011 09:14 AM
Posted to General Law Related