Forget trying to foster linear discussion among your readers. You are a national newspaper, pulling in millions of viewers, the comments threads beneath your articles will always be rubbish, because the community is too large. Nobody will read all the other comments before writing one themselves, so there is no discussion, and in such a large community there is no shared pool of knowledge. At best your discussions might work with threaded comments, or with peer voting, like on bigger communities such as Slashdot. But linear comments - for communities that pull millions of visitors - can never produce interesting conversations.

Makes me appreciate the Gristmill community all the more.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

I struggle to think of any newspaper sites which have vaguely rational discussions in the comments.

Here's the nadir of them all:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/413976/good-ne ...

Enjoy!