Housekeeping

Nymag.com’s (and Grub Street’s) New Commenting Platform Is Here!

As some of you may have noticed, after a brief period of either peaceful or withdrawal-inducing absence, the commenting section of articles across the nymag.com blogs has changed. We didn’t do anything crazy — hopefully you’ll find the experience largely familiar — but we did try to address some of the long-standing requests we’ve heard from both readers and moderators. Here’s a rundown of what’s new:

• Some of you have been frustrated by having to repeatedly log in to comment. You should now remain logged in unless you explicitly “log out” of the site.

• Previously, if you left a comment on an article, there was no way for you to know if someone had replied to your comment without having to go back to the article on your own. Now, whenever someone replies to one of your comments, we’ll e-mail you. The default setting for this is “on”; if you want to change the frequency of the notifications, or turn them off all together, you can do that from the Account Tab in your user profile, which you can access by clicking on your username next to a comment or in the site navigation. If you’d like to be alerted when someone “likes” a comment of yours, go to your notification settings and turn it on. (By default, this feature is off.) If you’re not receiving alerts, check your spam filter.

• Sometimes you read an article with a great commenting thread but because you have a job and a life, you can’t continuously return to the article to monitor the discussion. Now, you can follow a particular conversation by selecting the “Follow Conversation” icon that appears at the top of every commenting stream. You’ll receive an hourly digest of comments from that conversation via e-mail. If at any time you want to stop receiving a comment digest, just return to the article and click the “Unfollow Conversation” icon. Again, you can update the frequency of these notifications from your user profile page.

• We’ve increased the time limit for editing your comments. You’ll now have five minutes after you post to modify your thoughts (or jokes).

• You can now delete a comment you’ve posted.

• We’ve made some adjustments to our “blocked words” list. We don’t anticipate any issues, but let us know if you think our system is unfairly editing your words.

• Getting rid of trolls is the most requested commenting feature from readers, moderators, and editors. We hear you. We really hear you. Unfortunately, there are no magic settings for this, but our moderators have a couple of new tools at their disposal to wield as needed. We will strictly enforce our commenting guidelines.

• Soon, you’ll be able to share your comment to either Facebook or Twitter.

• Mobile readers, you will continue to be able to read comments on Vulture. Now you can read them on the Cut as well. Sometime in the next several weeks, we’ll allow you to start posting comments via your mobile device. We know this is important and it’s on the top of our list.

• You may notice that comments left prior to today at 5 p.m. are missing. Hold tight. We expect them to be restored over the next couple of weeks.

• The comment history on your profile page is currently unavailable. We know some of you have thousands of comments and you worked hard for those numbers. These comments will be restored in the future.

In the meantime, let us know if you have any questions, run into any technical glitches, or have any suggestions. When reporting a technical glitch, the more info we have, the better: Which browser are you using (e.g, Chrome v.31)? On which article did it occur? You can let us know by clicking the “Report Commenting Problems” link below the comment box to leave your feedback privately, or just use the comment section below. (Good news: If we reply to you, you’ll get an alert!)

Nymag.com’s (and Grub Street’s) New Commenting Platform Is Here!