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Over the past few months, we have been exploring different commenting platforms, and we have selected Disqus, a commenting system used by many media outlets. We selected this system because it offers a lot of the features we heard from you are important. We are currently testing it out on “Damage Done“, a three-part series on the impact of heroin addiction on two local families.

Optional social sign in.

With Disqus, you can sign in through your Facebook or Twitter accounts, or Google and Yahoo, or you can set up an account with Disqus. If you choose a Disqus sign on, an email is required, but you can select your screen name and protect your identity if you prefer.

Social sharing.

You can also share your comment on Facebook or Twitter to get your friends and followers engaged in the topic. Find this option under account settings—edit profile—services.

Thumbs up.

You can vote for others’ comments – similar to Facebook “likes”. You do not need to be logged on to like a comment.

Moderation.

We will continue to moderate all comments. You can also report a comment. To flag a comment, click the flag symbol at the bottom of the comment.

Threaded comments.

Disqus allows users to reply to others’ comments or post separately. The threads are nested so it’s easy to follow the conversation.

Keep up with the conversation.

You can see what others are saying by subscribing to the thread of comments on a story, and receive email notifications when someone has replied to your comment. To do this, when you are in Disqus, go to account settings—edit profile—notifications.

Check out this new commenting tool. Once you sign up through Disqus, you can adjust your personal settings within your account to subscribe to threads, post to social sites and much more. Check it out and tell us what you think. If you’ve used Disqus on other sites, let us know what you like and dislike about it.

This post is from Luanne Rife,  a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.

The Roanoke Times editorial board in December launched Point/Counterpoint to encourage informative debate on topics. Two experts are invited to begin the debate in the Sunday Horizon opinion section. The discussion then moves over to the RoundTable blog where we had hoped people would continue the debate and participate in live chats with the experts.

We like the idea behind Point/Counterpoint, but think we could have executed it better. For starters, the blog post became lost among all our other posts, and we don’t think we allowed enough time for people to dig into an issue before jumping to the next one.

This past Sunday, we initiated some changes. A Point/Counterpoint topic will appear over two weeks in Horizon. The first week will feature the experts’ initial essay. The second week will feature their rebuttals and comments gleaned from the RoundTable.

In the interim, we’ll feature it prominently on the RoundTable to make it easier for people to jump into the conversation. (For a fuller explanation, read my column here.) In fact, a lively discussion has already erupted with more than five dozen comments about home-schoolers and sports.

We’d like to hear your suggestions on how we can make this more user-friendly and of value to you.

1. Have you looked for Point/Counterpoint online? Were you able to find it easily? Did you join a discussion? What would make your experience more worthwhile?

2. Have you seen online debates at other websites that you thought were done well?

3. What topics get your blood pounding? Your eyes glazing?

4. What other suggestions would you have for us in presenting this feature or in drawing in participants?

A roundup of what we heard this week from users.

Commenting rules:

Thanks to all who posted their thoughts on what their top 3 rules would be for commenting.

Here’s how it seemed to boil down: Respect for other posters was the No. 1 priority. That was followed by variations of staying on topic; not dominating the conversation; and of course, don’t post anything libelous and/or slanderous.

Of debate: How to report violations? In the Pilotonline.com example we showed earlier, the site allowed commenters to flag comments for violation. But there seems to be debate on whether this should be a moderator’s responsibility instead.

In a system where comments are automatically approved, like pilotonline.com’s, it might be helpful if commenters could flag comments they thought violated standards and policy. It would be a nice backup for moderators. However, it could be easy to abuse the system, too.

Have you ever flagged another commenter’s comments? How did that process go?

How you share:

It was interesting to discover how sharing differs on different platforms.

For instance, our commenters seem more likely to use the share functions on stories from mobile devices than they would on desktops. This is because it’s easier to cut and paste a link on a computer than on mobile devices.

And sending direct links seems to increase the chances that a story will be read, mostly because the sender typically sends links that they know the receiver will be interested in. This makes sense.

Stories shared on Facebook and Twitter are treated a little more like news wires … you might read it when you scroll through your updates, but it’s of secondary interest.

Check back next week for a poll on sharing preferences.

News of the day

We know some of you have strong feelings about using your Facebook profile to comment. Turns out The Daily Progress in Charlottesville just changed its commenting system to tie into Facebook accounts. An excerpt:

“Beginning Thursday, there will be no more anonymous comments on DailyProgress.com.

We are integrating Facebook’s commenting abilities with DailyProgress.com, so with one username and password, you can share your comments on both websites. Your name and Facebook photo will appear next to your comments. …

With this move to Facebook comments, we’re keeping the conversation honest and real. We wouldn’t run a letter to the editor without identifying the writer. Now, the rules will be the same online.”

Last month, we had a lively discussion over our commenting system (original post and follow-up post), with readers making lots of suggestions and providing examples.

Now we’d like to revisit that topic, but focus more on what the rules should be for commenters. We’re taking a look at other websites that introduce their comments sections with some rules (and oftentimes a link to terms of use). The Roanoke Times currently has a “Submission Rules” section on its “Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions” page.

A great example can be found on the website of The Virginian-Pilot, a our sister newspaper in Norfolk, which we’ve talked about in earlier posts.

“COMMENTS ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here; comments do not reflect the views of The Virginian-Pilot or its websites. Users must follow agreed-upon rules: Be civil, be clean, be on topic; don’t attack private individuals, other users or classes of people. Read the full rules here.
- Comments are automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules, click the report violation link below it.”

We found another succinct advisory from TUAW (or The Unofficial Apple Weblog):

“Be nice, stay relevant and don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone in person.”

So our question today is: If you could make the rules for commenting on our website, name your top three …

Thanks for all the feedback this week. We’ve had several suggestions of different mobile news sites and apps you enjoy, including New York Times, Politico, Huffington Post, Slate, Twitter and News Republic. These are favored for their clean layout and ease of navigation. Continue letting us know which sites you use for news on the go.

Thanks for continuing to give your input on commenting.  After citing the Virginian-Pilot’s commenting system as an example on Monday, you shared what you liked   – and disliked  –  about it. Commenters seemed to agree that a “hide” function would be useful on a comment thread, to silence “trolls,” as one person said. But consensus was split on the usefulness of a thumbs up/thumbs down feature.

To learn more about PilotOnline.com‘s commenting system, we talked  to Mark Edelen, director of online production at  PilotOnline.com, to get a better sense on how that site’s registration system works. Here are some interesting notes from the conversation:

- PilotOnline.com commenters must register with a user name and an email address, which is used to confirm the registration. Once registered, the user goes through a “probationary” period where his comments must be approved by an online producer before being posted. When the user has met a certain number of approved comments, his comments are then automatically posted afterward.

- If a user “misbehaves” by posting inappropriate comments, he then gets switched back to permanent moderation, meaning producers must approve his comments before they’re posted.

- Commenting is allowed on all blogs and columns. It is turned on for news stories at the judgment call of the producers. Most routine crime briefs, for instance, do not allow comments. And some sensitive stories might only allow moderated comments.

- The registration system for the opinion section is a little different because the department wants its commenters to be verified. To comment on the opinion pages, you must register and post with your real name. A verfieid ID, such as a credit card, is also required for registration.

- The Pittsburg Post-Gazette (postgazette.com) is trying out commenting via Facebook. If you’d like to see how it works, check out the site, click on a story and scroll down.

We are reading your comments, sharing them with different teams working on the redesign, and implementing some changes immediately based on what we’re hearing (like adding the full site option to our mobile site).

Coming next week:  Managing Editor Michael Stowe talks about breaking news — how we cover it and how it’s displayed on roanoke.com. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Our discussion last week on commenting yielded lots of suggestions from readers.

As an example, commenter Other John pointed us to the system that our sister paper, The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, uses: pilotonline.com.

It looks like the site allows comments on all local stories posted, and uses a registration system for comments.

Look like you can register with whatever name you choose.

Some other features include: being able to report comments for violations; allowing responses to other comments; creating nests within a thread; and the “thumbs up/thumbs down” button. You can also “hide” comments by specific users, sort by thread or by date posted.

We have some questions out to the Pilot folks to get a little more detail as to how registration works and how the comments are moderated.

Check it out (click on the image for a larger view) and let us know what you think.

It’s been a vibrant second week on the blog! Our post on Monday about comments generated more than 60 comments. We are reading each of your posts, and your ideas are being passed on to the teams working on the redesign and other digital products. Keep them coming!

Here are the takeaways for us this week. See if you agree and continue adding your thoughts.

On commenting:

- Anonymous vs. Facebook comments: Many commenters were against the idea of commenting through Facebook accounts. There were privacy concerns, concerns about if the comments would appear on their friends’ Facebook pages, and concerns about how to sign on from work, because some companies do not allow Facebook access. And there are readers who don’t have Facebook accounts. These are all good points.

Question: What if we offered commenting with Facebook as one way to comment, but along with other methods as well?

- Comment threads/tools: A good idea we heard was allowing the ability to comment on comments, essentially creating nests of comments within a thread. Also suggested was the ability to “like/dislike” or “approve/disapprove” comments, much like the Facebook “like” button.

- Commenting on stories: Some of you lamented the fact that we don’t allow commenting on every story, just on what appears on our blogs. This is a topic that we’ve debated about in the newsroom. We aim to keep the discourse civil, and opening up every story to commenting also opens the possibility of haters taking over. But we also don’t have the resources to monitor every comment that would come in. More discussion to come.

- Hiding comments: Some have asked for the ability for individuals to “hide” certain commenters the way you can hide them on Facebook. It would make the comment-reading experience (which a lot of you enjoy) more pleasant, it seems. Good idea.

- Spam & browsers: CAPTCHA code woes. Right now we ask readers to fill out a Captcha code when submitting comments to block out spammers. It’s worked wonders against spamming (when “Fridge Magnet” blogger Lindsey Nair turned it off recently to test this theory, she got more than 300 spams overnight), but it frustrates some readers. Also, it seems things might work a little differently on different browsers (Google Chrome vs. Firefox vs. Explorer). We’ll continue to explore.

- You love Kevin Myatt’s ‘Weather Journal’ blog along with many other Roanoke Times bloggers you mentioned. That’s awesome and we’re glad to hear it.

On the value of reader-generated content:

This post didn’t generate as much discussion, but it’s clear that while readers see the value of reader-generated content, they don’t want to see it dilute or replace news stories that our staff produces. There could be good and useful ways to mesh the two, however, on certain types of stories.

As the editor of the Extra section, which often publishes solicited reader-generated content, I  see their value in the newspaper. From funny Scared-of-Santa photos to poignant letters from women to their younger selves, I have enjoyed having readers share a bit of themselves in the paper. To me, that’s what makes The Roanoke Times a community resource and something you can’t get anywhere else. It teaches us about the people in our community.

But it doesn’t replace news or news coverage. It’s just another way we can represent our little corner of the world. This is also a  topic we’ll continue to explore, so please keep sharing your thoughts.

Thanks for all your input this week. Your feedback is very valuable to us.