Commenting is now re-enabled. We’ve upgraded to a new commenting system with a lot of new features that many of you have suggested or requested. We apologise for the extended downtime of our comments section over the past day or two. Migrating thousands of comments over hundreds of articles proved to be quite difficult, and just when we thought everything was done and ready, we ran into unforeseen problems that had to be overcome.
Below we outline some of the new features that we hope you’ll use and enjoy. Please note that certain features are only available for commenters who register an account or log in through a social network profile like Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. If you don’t want to register an account or log in through an existing account, you can still comment as a guest with a name and email address like before.
Registering a Disqus account will however allow you to claim your old comments, change your display name, and build up your reputation score.
New Features
Star: Show our bloggers and translators some appreciation for their work by clicking this button to give them a star!
Images: You can now upload and insert images into your comments.
Sort Comments: Click on the “Discussion” tab to organize the comments by newest, oldest, or best first.
Mentions: You can address a specific person when typing your comment by typing “@” and their name. A drop-down menu will appear with possible matches. Select the right one and press Enter. When your comment is posted, “@name” will be bolded and linked to that person.
Collapsible threads: You can now collapse (minimize) a conversation thread by moving your mouse to the top-right corner and clicking on the minimize button.
Flag as inappropriate: If you notice a comment that violates our comment policy, please help the community by flagging it as inappropriate for our moderators to review.
Voting: Vote up comments you like and vote down comments you don’t. Votes affect the commenter’s reputation scores.
Edit: Made a typo? Registered Disqus users can edit their comments.
Share: Share a great comment on Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else with a link directly to the comment.
Moderators Wanted
With the new commenting system, we’ll also be looking to recruit a few additional volunteer moderators to help us manage our community. If you’re interested, we’ll expect you to have been an active commenter with a Disqus account and your old comments claimed and merged, in addition to understanding what our site is about and being able to uphold our comment policy consistently and objectively. We’ll reach out to potential candidates as we identify them but if you want to apply, you can also proactively contact us.
So, without further ado, we hand back to the site to you guys. Thank you for your patience and we hope you enjoy thee new features.
