WSJ is experimenting with its comments

WSJ redesign The Wall Street Journal is testing a new commenting system using software developed in partnership with The Coral Project.

A story on its website states, “In the first phase of this test, we are offering comments using this software on a limited number of articles, including essays from our Review section as well as Journal Reports.

“With this test, we’re aiming to gather feedback about how our readers use the software as well as monitor and improve the technical performance of the software.

“Here are some of the new features you’ll see:

— Better options for sorting the comments for those who want to view them by recency, most-replied and most-liked

— The ability to ignore individual users in the comments by clicking on their username

— The ability to identify your own comments as off-topic, to help others better sort through the discussion.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.