About Our New Commenting System

Behold our shiny new toy.

Long-suffering readers of this blog will notice that we’ve deployed a new system for commenting.

Commenters can now log in via Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, or accounts from a bunch of other social networks of which most of you have never heard. When you opt for one of these social log-ins, your comments will no longer be subject to moderation before posting. Keep in mind, though, that we are still carefully monitoring comments to ensure they adhere to the decency standards necessary for a civil discussion.

You can still comment on our site as a guest, but guest comments must be approved by a moderator before posting.

Now the new fun stuff that our new commenting allows:

• Once you’re logged in to FrontBurner, SideDish, or FrontRow, you’re logged in to comment on any of those three. (We’ll extend this same comments system to our other blogs at a later date.)

• Share your comments directly to Facebook or Twitter. Just check the appropriate box beneath the comment box before you go to post it.

• Up-vote comments that you like (just hit the thumbs-up symbol)

• You can reply directly to other comments. In fact, you can reply to a reply to a reply to a reply. Just hit the “Reply” link on the comment to which you want to reply.

• You can also help us keep the conversation clean. If you think a comment violates community standards of decorum, hit the red flag. That will alert our crack team of moderators that we may need to remove that comment. We’ll then take a look at it and decide whether it belongs.

Unfortunately, one cost of this transition is that any post published prior to the switch that we’ve made today can no longer be commented upon. It’s a cost we’re willing to accept for a system that we hope will continue to spur insightful conversations among our readers.