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Comment by mdevere | Hacker News Reader

Temporarily disabled by default but they turn them on for certain articles.

They claimed this was because comments had become too negative. It is possible they are genuinely just trying to protect the mental health of their staff who are usually the targets of more aggressive comments but somehow I doubt it.

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Had to happen when they publish 'review' videos when they don't know what they are reviewing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidMasterRace/comments/37nw4p/i...

It seemed to happen after they posted the SpaceX article(www.theverge.com/2015/6/29/8863121/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-explosioauses) that was poorly thought through. They got some criticism(but not abusive) feedback in the comments.

They started deleting comments in that thread and it all went downhill from there once people realized posts were being removed.

Kinda a shame, I liked Topolsky & Co but I don't visit it nearly as much after that.

It had been brewing a while, in my opinion. What I was seeing happening was, reasonable people would point out flaws in the article, then a moderator would jump in and argue with the person like they were a child and their points were stupid, escalating the situation and probably now pissing off more people than just the original complainer. I stopped reading their comments because of the moderators. Moderators should be seen and not heard.

Topolsky has been gone from there for a year, so it's just Co.

Deleting comments, locking threads created by reasonable people - in general, over-zealous mods suppressing the voices of users who don't toe the party line - is an unforgivable sin if you're trying to manage an online community, and The Verge is really terrible at this.

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