Comment 1000 is a website that ranks the top websites for comments. It has a comprehensive list that’s updated each month to show where various websites rank. For the month of September Niche Gamer, an enthusiast website focusing on rare and niche video games, was within the top 300 websites. In fact, they beat out reputable sites like Ad Week and BGR on the list.

They managed to nab the 310 spot for September, 2016. They’ve managed to climb up over some other well known websites along the way according to the Comment 1000 listing. Despite being one of the top 800 websites in America according to Alexa, Cinema Blend has lower user comment engagement than Niche Gamer; ranking at the 586 spot on the chart. Of course, user comments are vastly different from pageviews, but it shows that even if Niche Gamer may not drive as much traffic as the competition, they drive much higher user engagement.

But most impressive for Niche Gamer is that they managed to beat competitor Kotaku UK on the chart, which ranked at the 575 mark for the month of September.

Those are impressive figures for a niche website.

One of the reasons for such high user engagement is because Niche Gamer is against censorship, where-as a lot of the other websites who seem to be moving down the list (despite being much larger when it comes to overall traffic) aren’t afraid to close off entire comment sections or ban users at the drop of a dime, resulting in said users migrating to other websites or commenting elsewhere.

The usual response to this is that users who are banned or comment sections that are censored are in result of “toxic” communities. In reality there’s been a rise in clickbait, outrage-bait and spam-bait, resulting in a lot of people being angry about the content they read on websites, devaluing both the topic and the site’s integrity. Instead of facing this kind of criticism, a lot of times larger websites will simply close off the comment threads.

In fact, media misreporting and biased antagonism toward select groups and classes has resulted in more than 70% if Americans feeling as if the media is making the nation worse.

So the uptick in commenting on new-wave websites like Niche Gamer – which really gained prominence and popularity during #GamerGate as one of the few bastions of free speech – has allowed the site to catapult its community above other sites like Kotaku’s U.K., branch or BGR or Dorkly or even the Huffington Post U.K., which ranks at 824 out of the top 1000 websites. Heck, Niche Gamer even ranked higher in user engagement over Wired.com.

It was said that those displeased with the current crop of corrupt media outlets should head to different places or build their own… and well, it looks like gamers and entertainment enthusiasts are heeding that advice.

(Main image courtesy of Niche Gamer)