Press Democrat making changes to comments section

Dear PD readers and online commenters,click here.click here.click here.

After much consideration, we have decided to make some changes in how we handle comments on PressDemocrat.com. To provide a better user experience for our valued online community, we will now require a subscriber login to both read and post comments to stories on the website, beginning today.

We value open and honest dialogue, but the proliferation of hate speech, anonymous trolling and personal attacks have created a commenting environment that is not conducive to respectful thought exchange and sharing of viewpoints. Rather than eliminating comments entirely, we have made this feature a benefit for our subscribers.

If you are a current online subscriber and logged in, you may continue to use comments as before.

If you are a print subscriber and want to link to your online account to use comments, please

If you would like to sign up for a subscription, please

As always, we encourage comments on our reporting and value civil discussion, especially at this moment of robust national conversation on essential issues. But we will not tolerate on our site debate that devolves into racist hate speech or personal attacks, so as before we take the right to delete comments or ban commenters that break the rules.

For more on the comment rules,