Daily Maverick to bring back comments

The Daily Maverick is bringing back user comments below articles, a year after it canned them.

“When we did away with comments a little over a year ago, many of us breathed a sigh of relief,” it said.

“The time, effort, and heartache it took to try moderate comments outweighed the benefit to us as an organisation and you as the reader.”

The Daily Maverick said it kept looking for a solution and is positive that “Civil comments” will do the trick.

It will trial “Civil comments” for the next 30 days, which will work as follows:

1. Before posting a comment, a reader is asked to rate three other comments for civility and usefulness. Readers then have to rate their own comment.
2. If the community rates the comment down, the comment appears to be posted for that reader but no one else sees it. The reader is also identified as troublesome – the number of posts they can make may be limited or they will be blacklisted.
3. A machine learning algorithm will also check posts. Posts flagged as out-of-order are marked for further attention.

“The system is designed to encourage debate by attempting to nudge comments in the direction of civil debate.”

Now read: Article comments disappearing in South Africa

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