Housekeeping: Our commenting platform

First of all, thanks to the many of you who offered constructive input after we announced we’d be rolling out changes to our commenting system.

After a couple weeks of deliberation, we’ve decided that we’ll be switching over to Facebook’s commenting platform in mid-May. We’ll also be unveiling a detailed forum policy before the Facebook switch, providing more guidelines about what kinds of comments will be removed from the site.

Obviously, this move isn’t going to be popular with everyone. But it offers a number of advantages we think will foster a good environment for dialogue:

• First, it will make verifying people’s identities much easier. Is it foolproof? No. But people tend to use their real names on Facebook. Validating people’s real identities from the registration system we currently have at our disposal – while possible – would have been labor intensive. We’d rather spend our time reporting and writing…so that you have things to comment on.
• Second, it should improve the overall civility of the discussions. With the usual exceptions (libel, hate speech, incitement to violence, etc…) people will still be free to share just about any view they would like. Our hope is that, with identities required, readers will find ways to express their views in as neighborly a way possible. Since, you know, we all live about two miles from each other…
• Third, it could help bring new readers into the discussion. The social networking aspects of the social network mean more people will see links to our stories and discussions. We hope this means people who haven’t heard about the site in the past might find out about it, find it useful, and start contributing themselves.

In the interim, the comments system will remain as it has…so we respectfully ask that you all try to be respectful with one another.

A sincere thank you to our regular readers — we hope the coming changes will make PVPost.com an even better place to be part of this great community.