After almost 13 years of allowing comments on its stories, WRAL.com has removed commenting as an option from most pages effective Sept. 17, 2019. This decision comes after numerous iterations of our commenting platform and policies.

WRAL.com has tried for years to create a forum for the civil exchange of opinions and ideas. Despite our best efforts -- which included paid moderators, requiring Facebook logins and artificial intelligence tools from Google to identify toxic language -- story comments have become a distraction to many visitors and our staff.

Comment threads have become overwhelmed by trolls and anonymous contributors who too often hijack comment threads with offensive and inappropriate submissions, in clear violation of commenting guidelines. The effort to police comments takes our staff away from the core mission of reporting on local news.

With this change, WRAL.com joins a growing number of media outlets in the U.S. and abroad to remove story comments.

Visitors who wish to comment on stories should share that content on their favorite social platforms and comment there.

WRAL.com will continue to seek visitor feedback on coverage and story ideas through the Contact Us form on our website and apps.