Why all the articles that are closed to comments?

[Sciophyte]

I noticed that more and more articles on certain topics are published with locked comments sections. Why is that? For example, after you posted the piece about GearBox threatening to pull out of Texas because of anti-trans legislation, I checked the same topic out on IGN, and lo and behold, the comments there were not the toxic slug-fest you might expect; in fact, the exchanges were mostly quite reasonable. Does PCG not trust its audience to discuss hot-button topics with some modicum of rationality? But hey, maybe you know better who your readers are. In any event, PCG is no stranger to moderation where it's needed. So why just forestall any discussion from the get-go?

 

[SHaines]

For the most part, we do want to allow discussions to unfold naturally, which is why the vast majority of articles have their comments open. However, we don't have paid staff on hand 24/7 to handle Disqus comments for articles, so if one is being published at odd hours, they'll close comments for certain topics that generally need more direct care.

I've been working on implementing processes and policies to help keep the Moderators up to date on things, which means we've had substantially better interactions between users in recent months. We definitely want to keep that conversation rolling, but there will, periodically, be articles with closed comments.

 

[Sciophyte]

Gotcha. Come to think of it, the discussion on that other site may of course already have been cleaned up a bit.