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…

Our story of the attack on the Belleville West school bus has been viewed more than a half million times, and more than 700 of you have commented on this story or this video.
 
Many of the comments have been insightful.…

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…

The Minneapolis Star Tribune refuses to allow story comments on eight topics. An article on MinnPost.com quotes Terry Sauer, the Star Tribune’s assistant managing editor/digital, as saying comments are turned off on stories that deal with:

Crime
Muslims
Fatalities/suicides
Gays
Distressed local companies
Racially sensitive stories
Local homes stories
CJ (A…

Thanks to all who commented and voted in the Editors’ Desk poll about story comments.

The results were clear: The way we’re handling story comments isn’t working. That opinion is shared by numerous editors at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com, including…

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…

As any reader of STLtoday.com can attest, story comments can sometimes get nasty. STLtoday.com has clear guidelines about what’s fair and not fair to say in comments.

A list of the forbidden: “Messages containing intentionally misleading or false information, defamatory content, threats,…

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”…

There have been lots of conversations going on across the country recently about comments on stories. With name-calling, profanity, racist remarks and more, some of the entries are the antithesis of conversation — at least the face-to-face conversations I take…

SIU-Carbondale’s college newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, has suspended online story comments, its editor told readers in a note last week.

“Congratulations,” wrote Editor Allison Petty, “It is not easy to offend college students who spend most of their time in a…