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Imminent Changes Coming to Our Comments Section


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I am aware that this will not be a popular announcement. But it is what it is, and the best we can do is adapt.

By week’s end, Livefyre comments will disappear, and Facebook-based commenting will replace it. On the tech side, people are working to preserve old comments with the goal of possibly restoring them later, but for the immediate future, they will disappear. If you want to be certain to preserve any particularly creative thing you’ve said, or even the infamous Tupper Adam comment, you have until Thursday afternoon to do it. I’m aware there are also issues with the site search engine – if it still does not work for you, do a targeted Google search.

What else?

Does this mean I need a Facebook account? Yes.

But what if I don’t want people to see my real name on a site that has gross fanfic? Or if I don’t want people here to know who I am? The best solution is to create a new Facebook profile. If you do it under an established alias that resembles a real name, like “James Polk” or “Sly Dante,” Facebook should allow it, as they do with drag queens now. I maintain separate FB accounts for work and for personal stuff.

Why would you do this to us? It’s a company-wide, platform-wide decision, made with the best interests of the majority of publications in mind. Most of the company properties are newspapers, for which anonymous comments don’t have much advantage.

How do we know that once we sign up, the comments won’t just change again? You don’t. I don’t. We deal.

And if I don’t want to do this, and just leave? I’ll be sorry to lose you. I hope I can persuade most of you not to leave. There isn’t anything I can do about this change except prepare you for it. We can always interact on Twitter still, under whatever handle you like.