One of the biggest flashpoints for controversy in PennLive’s 20-plus-year history hasn‘t been the news. It’s been the comments.

Screening them for personal attacks, profanity or off-topic remarks has become an increasing drain on newsroom resources. Despite the invested time, money and effort, it’s also failed to dampen a pervasive tone of incivility and mean-spiritedness.

This is exactly the opposite of what we aim for in building constructive conversations with our readers on our website.

As a result, beginning Wednesday, we will eliminate the ability to freely comment on every story on PennLive.com and will remove comments from old posts. We are going to try allowing comments on only a limited number of moderated stories on the website throughout the week.

Despite this major change, we want to emphasize that we remain eager for your feedback — now more than ever.

Readers will still be able to comment on the many stories we post daily on Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms.

As always, you can click the byline on any story to email that reporter. You can reach me at cbarron@pennlive.com. And we are posting a story with more information on how to contact us.

Moderated stories we’re working on for later this week will offer live chats on the lack of diversity among Pennsylvania teachers, lawmakers who bring the most funding home to their districts, and post-season developments in Penn State football.

In addition, we hope to double down on letters to the editor and op-ed columns from the public. We publish letters online daily and three times a week in The Patriot-News.

We want to thank the many, many people who took the time to contribute thoughtful, enlightening comments on our stories over the years.

Only 2.26% of PennLive’s audience actually reads the comments. An even smaller fraction – only .05% or 3,003 visitors a month – writes them.

An example from the weekend was the wide variety of views shared on the legacy of the late Mayor Stephen Reed. “Nikr” called him, “A great visionary for not only the city of Harrisburg, but the entire surrounding community!” While “It Doesn’t Matter” wrote: “I don’t wish to tarnish Mayor Reed, but let’s do a reality check on the benefits of being a mayor in a capital city.”

We greatly appreciate all the excellent story suggestions and valuable news tips you provide. Your toughest criticisms are often well deserved and have helped make us a better news organization.

While many readers will no doubt cheer the loss of comments on the website, we are very aware that others will be angry and dismayed over losing this source of conversation.

As the audience for PennLive’s website quadrupled over the past decade, commenting soared as well. The site now averages almost 1,000 comments a day.

That said, only 2.26% of PennLive’s audience actually reads them. An even smaller fraction – only .05% or 3,003 visitors a month – writes them. That’s for a website that topped 6 million visitors in December.

MORE: Questions and answers about our decision on comments

Across all 11 Advance Local websites — which serve 50 million visitors in an average month — just 2,340 people produce more than half of the comments.

A very small group of readers has had a disproportionately negative impact on the tone of many of the conversations we host on PennLive. Our efforts to enforce rules of engagement have failed to have any lasting effect. And numerous readers told us they stopped contributing to the comments because they dreaded the personal backlash that could ensue.

Across all 11 Advance Local websites — which serve 50 million visitors in an average month — just 2,340 people produce more than half of the comments.

Some news sites have tackled this problem by continuing to invest in expensive moderation systems that are far from perfect at catching inappropriate posts. We did as well, in an effort to supplement our in-house staff. But it became increasingly apparent that outside monitoring wasn’t a permanent solution for us.

We’re following in the footsteps of many other news operations that have dropped comments, including our sister newsroom at oregonlive.com, as well as Reuters, Vice News and National Public Radio.

Again, readers will still be able to comment publicly on our coverage via social media. PennLive’s main Facebook page publishes more than 50 posts a day and provides a high-quality venue for readers and our journalists to engage. Our Penn State, Eagles, Steelers and Ravens and PA Preps pages also host great conversations.

You can also engage with reporters on Twitter or follow our main accounts: @PennLive, @PatriotNews, @PSUFootball, @PASports and @MidstateEvents.

Thank you, everyone, for reading PennLive. Your loyalty has made it one of the biggest news and information websites in Pennsylvania.

And thank you, again, to everyone who engaged in the comments over the years.

Cate Barron is president of PA Media Group. Contact her at cbarron@pennlive.com or 717 255-8165.