We’re going to take a couple steps to make reading and writing story comments a better experience on STLtoday.

A vast majority of our comments add insight, information, humor or opinion. We want to keep it that way.
But we want to…

The Columbia Daily Tribune is getting some support and some criticism for its decision to turn off commenting on a story it ran Sunday about the death of Jennifer Stewart, granddaughter of former basketball coach Norm Stewart, in an auto accident…

We’re inviting you to check out a new way to follow news from your community. Go to STLtoday.com/neighborhoodnews and you’ll have the ability to search for news stories from you neighborhood or town.

There are more than 300 cities, towns, neighborhoods or…

Editors this morning shut down readers’ ability to comment on the story “Drugs played no role in Coleman slayings.”   Before the shutdown, the story drew 1,189 comments. Many of them were inappropriate, some vulgar.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com staffers try…

You might be surprised how often an otherwise intelligent reader comment to an online story is deleted because of a gratuitous profanity. Cuss words, even masked as #### and —–, are likely to get flagged by fellow readers.

“Profanity,” “masked profanity”…

Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher reports that staffers at the Wall Street Journal have been given rules for professional conduct, including a long list of dos and don’ts for social networking.

Strupp quotes from an e-mail to employees from Deputy Managing…

This note to readers from Editor Arnie Robbins and Managing Editor Pam Maples appears on Page A2 of Sunday’s Post-Dispatch:

Starting Monday, you will see changes in your Post-Dispatch.We know it is popular in some circles in many cities these days…

We’ve streamlined the way the navigation works at the top of STLtoday.com.

In the past, each channel would open a drop-down menu when you moused over it. The dropdown gave details of every blog, column and forum available in that channel.…

We’ve just implemented a new calendar. It’s a new way to feature events for your school or church, your bar or restaurant, your band or group. We hope it makes submitting and finding events on STLtoday.com, in the Post-Dispatch and…

Jack Shafer, media critic for Slate.com, says the newspaper industry has fumbled its online efforts — the latest example of the industry’s long clumsy dance with technology.

In a blog post this morning — “How Newspapers Tried to Invent the Web.…