Our shiny new comments system

Online Editor Tom Whitwell writes:

Two years ago, Times Online was one of the first newspaper websites in Britain to allow readers to leave comments at the bottom of almost every article we publish*.

The experiment was a dramatic success. We receive around 4,000 comments each day. Every comment is read by a human being before it is published. That's a significant investment, but we've found that our readers' comments really enhance our journalism.

Today, Times Online is launching a dramatically upgraded comments system. You'll see a few immediate changes, with more to come over the next few months.

Before leaving a comment, you now have to go through a short and hopefully painless registration procedure. You'll be sent an email to verify your address. This will enable us to highlight and reward our best commenters, and weed out our least constructive.

The 300 character limit which we reluctantly introduced a year ago has been lifted. You now have 2,000 characters (around 250 words) to express yourself, although we still welcome brevity.

We hope that the moderation process will become quicker and more accurate than ever. In the past we've been overwhelmed at times, causing a lot of frustration.

Times Online's blogs, like Comment Central, use a different publishing system, so comments here will be unchanged. Over the next few months we'll be joining the systems together.

Hopefully, you'll find the new system easy to use. If you have any problems or ideas, email me at commentshelp@timesonline.co.uk or leave comments below using the old fashioned blog system.

* There are a few exceptions: We don't think it's appropriate to allow comments on obituaries, and it's legally hazardous to allow them on some court reporting.