Does anyone know the history of technology stacks used by NYT to provide comments? Like HN, the comments are often more insightful than the article:
Transactional revenue
"... Yes, "think of subscribership as membership." But that doesn't mean "in short, get some percentage of the loyal readers of The Times to pay more — some of them a lot more." It means, leveraging the strength of the very real community of loyal readers that the Times has, by building more and more revenue streams from delivering more and more value to members of that community."
Public debate
"... A good place to begin would be with the comments areas, with the goal to transform them from the current depositories of opinion into well moderated forums for dialogue which instead of producing points of view stimulate learning and advancement. Public intellectuals rather than know-it-alls would be the result. That would be different!"
Weekly cultural ritual
"... The Sunday edition of The NYT is different. I peruse this all week while giving my electronic devices a break. I'm older and still enjoy the serendipity of discovery. Yet I rarely look at the A-section. It's old news and I've already digested all - more than likely I have digested it prior to your pages being sent to the printing plant."
"Truth be told, I'd be sad about the disappearance of all but the Sunday edition from print, but more to the point: It's infuriating, and confounding, that the Times insists on undermining its Sunday edition, a cultural institution so important and dear to its readers' hearts."
"... every Sunday morning I would buy the $$$Sunday London Times PAPER, spending all the long day reading it because every article in that preposterously-thick paper was delicious-even the sports section."
It would be interesting if the non-paying audience contributes higher quality comments :) Or maybe lower-traffic blogs attract less/different posturing than comments on high traffic articles.
"Truth be told, I'd be sad about the disappearance of all but the Sunday edition from print, but more to the point: It's infuriating, and confounding, that the Times insists on undermining its Sunday edition, a cultural institution so important and dear to its readers' hearts."
"... every Sunday morning I would buy the $$$Sunday London Times PAPER, spending all the long day reading it because every article in that preposterously-thick paper was delicious-even the sports section."