You may notice we’ve tweaked the way comments work on the site. These changes reflect your feedback and suggestions on how discussion can be improved.
At The Conversation we take commenting seriously, because we want the site to allow for informed and robust debate but always in a civil and courteous manner. That’s the DNA of our site and how we want it to differ to others. And we want to protect that point of difference.
The changes: you can now choose the order in which comments are displayed. The default view shows the most “recommended” comments first, but if you prefer to see the most recent comments first, you can choose “newest” instead.
Also at your suggestion, we’ve also changed the comment voting system to remove “down voting” for unpopular comments. If you’d like to recommend a comment you think was insightful you can still do so.
We’ve restricted replies to just one level deep. We’re hoping to flatten comment threads to help keep discussions on-topic, and the single-column design lends itself to the smaller displays on mobile phones too. We’ll be adding commenting to the mobile site soon.
And finally, we are opposed to anonymous postings, so we require you to use your real name. If your comment is not something you want to put under your real name, it’s a fair bet you shouldn’t be saying it.
Please remember our community standards before you comment. Failure to comply may lead to your comments being removed.
Happy commenting.
Misha Ketchell
Managing Editor