Publisher's note: Introducing our new comments experience

I am writing today to let you know we have launched a brand-new commenting system across the World Soccer Talk website, and I want to explain why and what it means for you.

Previously, no registration was required to post a comment. While it helped make it as easy as possible to share feedback on an article or to reply to other readers, it had numerous flaws.

First and foremost, the commenting system was very rudimentary. The basic features were extremely limited. You could post or reply to a comment, but no other benefits or features were available (we’ll get to those benefits of the new commenting system in a minute). Second, we recently saw a significant increase in the amount of abusive comments that violated our community guidelines. That rise in trolling and hateful comments, as well as spam, meant that it required more time for us to moderate discussions.

New comments experience: Features and benefits

The new comments system is so much better than the previous one World Soccer Talk used. Just a few of the new features in the commenting system include:

1. Follow conversations you’re interested in, so you can see when follow-up discussions are had. In a related option, you can opt-in to get an email when someone replies to your comment.

2. Follow other readers so you can see their comments. Likewise, other readers can follow you to read your comments.

3. Edit your comments if you made a typo that you need to correct,

4. See the articles that are trending based on the most active conversations,

5. Give a thumbs up or thumbs down to specific comments,

6. Sort comments by newest, oldest, most liked or the ones that have the most replies,

7. Each commenter has their own user profile, so you can see what other comments they posted as well as how many likes and followers they have,

8. In the Feed section, you can see the most active conversations. You can find this under the community notification bell that’s at the bottom right corner of the screen,

9. Change your avatar photo under the settings, and

10. See the Trending Articles listed on the homepage and the right sidebar on pages and posts.

Let us know if you have any feedback or questions.

Photo: Derek Reese