A note about comments on our website
We have been using Thrive Comments, which provides the thumbs up/down feature, as an overlay to the built-in comments system on our website, but it has been causing problems, so we are deactivating it.
Over the past few months, we have had reports from readers that the comment form was not loading fully or was not visible at all; after lengthy troubleshooting, we were able to find a developer who added some code to alleviate the problem.
However, the entire website went down yesterday after we published an article with high community interest, and the troubleshooting led directly to Thrive Comments, which was adding significant load to the server along with every view from a reader.
We have now deactivated Thrive Comments and currently do not intend to reactivate it. We are looking into creating a custom module to add the thumbs up/down feature, but we can’t say when that will happen.
We appreciate everyone who reads our articles and takes the time to comment, and we know that the thumbs up/down feature is popular with our readers, but we can’t continue to use a module that has shown it can take down our website.
Thanks for letting us comment! They can get intense sometimes but we get to see the views of both sides of things.
It’s something you don’t have to do but you choose to, and it’s greatly appreciated.
Nothing but 🤗,😘, and👍🏻 for everything that you all do.
I’ll second the “thank you” for providing the opportunity to comment.
Main St Daily News also has this feature and, up until very recently the “Sun” did NOT. Now if they would just start reporting the news again.
Appreciate you keeping your readers informed. Thank you
Generally, I see the same 6-12 individuals (assuming no person using more than 1 identity) posting comments.
I support the elimination of pseudonyms and screen names: posting available only to verifiable real identities with real names.
It’s not right that a “screen name”, hiding behind a device, levies criticism on real, named persons in their comments.
I suspect the number of comments would be dramatically reduced if posting required real names with verifiable identities.
There is not, and has not been for a very long time, ANY reputable local media in Gainesville/Alachua County (online, print, TV/radio), that engages in true investigative journalism.
To me, there’s a drastic difference between “reporting” and good quality journalism.
“Reporting” merely re-states the (hopefully) facts of of an event, issue, etc.
Good quality journalism investigates, researches then publishes “the story behind the story”.