After much deliberation, the P&I editorial staff decided to remove the comment function from the website. We are aware that comments on P&I have been a space for lively and interesting debate regarding Australian public policy, as well as other topics, for many years.

However, it takes a lot of time to moderate such discussions. There are also potential defamation risk. Some comments are offensive and the software we use to manage comments is ‘clunky’.

All this has meant that on balance we feel it necessary to remove the feature.

We hope that our social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, may provide opportunities for our audience to voice opinions.

To those of you who have been taking the time to write thoughtful and well-researched replies to our authors, we invite you to reach out to authors directly to give feedback or submit your own articles for consideration so everyone may enjoy the dialogue!

Help with commenting on P&I

If you wish to comment on any articles on Pearls & Irritations, scroll down to the bottom of any posts and you’ll see the comment section appear.

We use the ‘Disqus’ comment system to manage, approve and filter comments. It is a great time-saver for the editors, comments are generally posted straight away and it increases engagement among our readers.

If you already have a Disqus account, you can just login with your email and password.

You can also login using your Google, Facebook or Twitter account in the same way.

If you decide to sign up with Disqus you will be asked to fill out your name, email and a password which you would like to use for your new account, shown with the red arrow above.

Once you have done this and clicked the ‘I am not a robot’, please click the button shown by the red arrow below.

You will then be asked to send a verification email to the email address you gave. Just click on the link containing the email you provided and this window will appear. Click the ‘Send verification email’ option.

Once this is done, wait a few minutes and you will find this email in your inbox. Please click the option to verify your email. (Please note that sometimes these emails end up in your spam mail, so you may have to check there.)

Please note, this final step is important, any comments you post won’t be published until you’ve completed it.

You’ll be taken to a page on Disqus, but unless you want to add your image to your account, there is nothing else you need to do.

You can now go back to the post on P&I and make a comment. When you next visit P&I you’ll generally find that Disqus remembers you and you don’t have to log in again.

(One final note: after having gone through this you may have to refresh the article page to make sure Disqus has ‘caught up’. Just click the ↻ button on the top of your browser.)

If you have any questions, click to send us an email.