Starting today, you will see a change in how you can comment on stories at timescolonist.com.

From now on, we'll be asking you to log in before you comment. We hope the change will cut down on the inappropriate and hostile comments that have sometimes been posted by anonymous readers on the site.

You will be asked to register (this is only done once and takes less than a minute) and provide a name that will appear on your posts. After that, you will be asked to log in with your registration information.

We hope the new process will lead to more civil discussion and a better exchange of views. It will also make it easier for us to publish selected comments in the newspaper.

Only the name you register is visible on your comment. We encourage you to use your real name to stand by your comments. Your email address is not visible and is protected as outlined in our privacy policy that you can read here.

By registering, you can participate in other features such as ranking comments with a “thumbs up, thumbs down” and sorting the comments by popularity.

We have also made the log-in quicker, and you remain logged in as you visit other stories on the website.

We are often asked why we don’t open comments on all stories.

We do not permit comments on stories about crimes or the courts because of legal and ethical considerations.

We have also found that some topics, despite our guidelines (see below), routinely attract hateful or libelous comments that do not serve the public

interest.

If you see a comment that violates our commenting guidelines, is off topic,

or is spam, we encourage you to use the Report Abuse button so our editors can review the comment.

We believe community commenting on stories is a valuable part of timescolonist.com and we welcome your feedback.

If you have any problems with registering or questions about this change,

please contact us at web@tc.canwest.com

Commenting guidelines:

1. No obscenity. This includes name-calling and coded swearing.

2. No personal attacks. You can make your point by disagreeing with someone’s opinion without attacking him or her personally.

3. No comments that defame a person’s character or contain unproven allegations.

4. No comments that promote hatred toward an identifiable group.

-Denise Helm, Online News Director