For years, news publishers have grappled with what to do with their comments sections.

Commenters may be hostile or spread misinformation. Moderators are burned out. Some outlets have limited commenting privileges to registered users or subscribers. Some have developed their own commenting platforms. And more than a few have called it quits, referring users to social media to voice their opinions.

In 2022, German news magazine and website Der Spiegel was getting around 1.7 million comments on its stories per month. That was too many comments for readers to read and for social media producers to moderate, according to product manager Laura Badura. So the outlet overhauled what it means to have comments on its site all together.

After a year of designing and testing, Der Spiegel’s Debate, a centralized discussion space for readers to deliberate the day’s biggest issues, launched in December 2023. Fourteen months in, Badura says the quality of comments has improved, and while the Debate feature isn’t a major subscription driver, subscribers who do comment tend to spend more time on the site.

Here’s how Debate works: Each day, Der Spiegel’s “moderation team” (folks on the social media team who manage the Debate platform) develops around four yes-or-no debate questions about the day’s news events. Debates are free for registered users to read, but only paid subscribers can comment on them. Meanwhile, comments on individual articles have been turned off.

The debate questions on February 19 were:

Other recent debates include “Are feminist issues neglected in the political debate?”, “Does Europe need its own army with nuclear weapons?”, and “Can Europe keep up with the global AI race thanks to new investments?:

Debate feels like an orderly, hyperfocused Reddit thread. (Der Spiegel’s main color is also a similar Reddit orange.) The design encourages readers to vote in a poll and displays Der Spiegel’s stories related to the question. Then subscribers can write their own comments, reply to others’ comments, and share posts from the discussion on social media. Subscribers can also suggest future debate topics to Der Spiegel and vote on whether they’re interested in others’ suggestions. (One popular suggestion with 52 votes: “Gulf of America: Should journalists show solidarity with AP representatives and stay away from further press conferences?”)

Der Spiegel moderators use those suggestions for future debate questions. Recently selected debate questions include “Is the USA still a reliable partner for Germany?” and “Would a reward of 1,000 euros for one year of continuous employment be an appropriate incentive for the long-term unemployed?”

The Debate platform has been mutually beneficial for subscribers and the newsroom, Badura said. While commenters get to engage in meaningful conversations and learn from and about each other, Der Spiegel’s moderators have a more manageable workload. The Debate platform’s software uses AI to flag comments to review that may be hateful or offensive. Badura said that the approval rate for Debate comments is 90%, up from about 85% under the old comments system.

The Debate section also gives journalists a better sense of public opinion about issues on their beats. Badura said the previous format of comments under every article made it difficult to analyze the public’s opinion on a story or issue. If Der Spiegel published 20 articles about Donald Trump’s inauguration, for example, the old format would have left the moderators with countless comments and discussions on 20 different pages.

“The editorial teams are way happier with this Debate space than with the comment sections before,” Badura said. Spiegel journalists can link to relevant debates in their articles, the homepage features prominent links to Debates. ““From time to time, the Debate spaces are the number one article on our website,” Badura said. “This [motivates users] to write good comments because then they can be featured on our homepage.”

Along with a clear prompt, comments are divided into a green “yes” or red “no” column and can be sorted by most popular, newest, oldest, and most relevant. Each debate is only open for 24 hours (though they can be reopened or extended depending on the issue, Badura said). Users can also leave comments on both sides, since few issues are black and white.

The format and features were designed intentionally based on intense user research, Badura said. Der Spiegel, like other publications, kicked around the idea of getting rid of its comments section, but survey results found that users wanted a (mostly) public forum to safely talk with other people about topics in the news.

“We asked [users] why they don’t write comments on Facebook or somewhere else, but they really love the quality [filter] that Der Spiegel provides. When they comment on Der Spiegel, it means to them that there’s some kind of moderation. They said they wanted a common space, but they told us that [current] common spaces are lacking [oversight]. Some of them also said that they really need a safe space somewhere on the internet, and they would love to have this safe space at Der Spiegel.”

Commenters can create usernames and choose from a range of avatars for their profiles so that they don’t have to use their full names or real photos. They can add short bios to their profiles, which is shown alongside which topics they most frequently comment on, how many comments they’ve posted, and how many debate ideas they’ve suggested. They’re awarded points based on the length of their comments, as an incentive to leave longer and more elaborate comments.

One of Debate’s main safety and civility features is subtle. Each comment only has a heart button, so commenters can positively react to comments that they like. Badura said that Debate did have downvotes at one point, but the team removed the feature to make the environment more friendly for discussion. (Users can report comments to moderators for review if they think they violate the discussion rules.)

“We don’t want to cancel out users by giving out downvotes,” Badura said. “We don’t want the users to feel bad. We know our users provide strong feedback if they’re against the opinion of another user, so we don’t need the downvotes here.”

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