Where Did Comments Go?
Like most online publications, we have a love-hate relationship with comments. We want to bring them back, but we’re committed to detoxifying them first.
Photo: retrieved
Online comments reflect the political culture they inhabit, so it can’t come as a surprise that, as Venezuela’s political debate has grown nastier and more nihilistic, our own comments section took a turn for the ugly. For much of the last year, we’ve gone back and forth between a desire to keep a space for debate open and the growing realization that it just wasn’t working for most of you.
As a handful of exceptionally unpleasant voices grew to dominate the forum, it became increasingly clear to us that regular readers had given up on commenting. The board turned into a cloaca. Rather than enhancing the reading experience, comments were debasing it.
Which is why we decided to pause.
We’re committed to bringing comments back, better. We’re evaluating options for how to do that. It may take a week or two.
Sit tight.
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