We’ve temporarily closed comments for maintenance, but they’ll be back

If an article is posted and there are no commenters, does it make a sound?

Image credit: C. Gilbert, 19th c

Hark! Comments have been temporarily turned off on Rock Paper Shotgun. We and all of our sibling websites are moving to a new commenting platform and the existing comments need to be ported across. This process will take some time – days, perhaps – and we’ll update this post once it’s complete and commenting functionality has been restored.

In brief, we need to take a snapshot of the almost 2 million comments posted on RPS over the last seventeen years, then import them into the new system. It’s better if new comments aren’t being created in that time.

Once comments return, you shouldn’t need to do anything differently. Your login and site account will remain the same as before, but the comment section itself will have a different look and feel and probably a few different features. We’ll share more details once the switchover happens.

If we had been able to plan this further in advance, we would have published a series of articles containing our most controversial opinions, to take advantage of your brief inability to yell at us. But alas, it wasn’t to be. Instead I’ll say that I truly value the comment community here and I look forward to hearing from you all again on these pages soon. In the meantime, you can make yourself heard by emailing me with any thoughts, questions or feedback.