The internet has a problem, and that problem is people. Dramatic incidents of public harassment, abuse and threatening behaviour are never far from the news, and during recent years, public awareness of this unpleasantness has grown dramatically. With it has come an understanding of the harms done, not just by high-level threats and abusive behaviour but by a more insidious culture of dismissal, denigration and disrespect that surrounds them. There is a widespread perception that these are problems that need to be solved, and many digital media sites - including Twitter, Facebook and many others - are actively looking for solutions.

The Guardian is among them. Like the rest of the internet, the Guardian’s comments can be a pleasure to read and participate in; they can also be a hard slog full of dismissive discrimination, or a grim argument between camps whose views are immovable and whose main goal is simply to advance an agenda.

For news organisations, the question is no longer whether or not we want to engage with our audience: no news organisation that wants to be relevant in the digital age would dream of retreating from social media, and engagement in many forms is vital to our survival. The question is how we want to engage, and under what circumstances. In some places, news organisations are stepping away from comments, deciding that the costs outweigh the benefits, and turning to other modes of interaction instead - often away from their own platforms, in striking contrast to other industries which are eager to invite interaction that they can manage and own.

The Guardian is not making that retreat - but that means we do have to evolve and manage our comments deliberately. We are not like the 4chan message boards, where anyone can say almost anything without consequences. Just as Facebook, Twitter, Metafilter and many others provide spaces for different kinds of communities to gather, we want to create spaces on the Guardian for particular conversations and particular groups to speak - with each other and with us.

The issue of comments on news sites is often conflated with conversations about free speech - about the ability of individuals to speak their minds without fear of government censorship. But, as we do with the stories we publish, the Guardian can and should make decisions about the tone of the conversations we want to see flourish here. Allowing freedom for some means effectively silencing others - and deciding to let everyone speak regardless of what they say is, in effect, a statement that abuse is acceptable. Moderation is not censorship, any more than editing is - it’s a careful process that aims to curate the best of the web and allow expert voices and thoughtful discussion to emerge.

It can be too easy to ignore the good comments in favour of focusing on the problematic ones, and it’s important to be clear: the majority of commenters on the Guardian leave entertaining, enlightening and engaging messages. They point out errors, they keep us sharp, they share experiences or alternative viewpoints, and they chat together. These communities range across all the Guardian’s journalism, and sometimes emerge in unexpected places; on the running blog, on the politics live blog, around our video games coverage and our cartoons.

But we need to do more to facilitate respectful discussions and constructive debate everywhere on the site, as well as to protect our staff from the abuse and harassment that has become a routine part of writing for the internet for too many people. Not every writer experiences these things in the same way, and not every community on the Guardian needs the same amount of attention or management. We do not believe that conversations about crosswords, for instance, need to be treated in the same way as conversations about rape - but we do think that both should adhere to common principles of respect to the community, to the author, to the subjects of our articles and to the space in which they are published, even when participants may violently disagree with one another.

We are going to be implementing policies and procedures to protect our staff from the impact of abuse and harassment online, as well as from the impact of repeatedly being exposed to traumatic images. We are also changing the process for new commenters, so that they see our community guidelines and are welcomed to the Guardian’s commenting community. On that point, we are reviewing those community standards to make them much clearer and simpler to understand, and to place a greater emphasis on respect.

We are also looking at how our moderation processes and practices work. We have already changed the structure of the moderation team to give them greater visibility and authority within the Guardian, and we are streamlining the process of reviewing moderation decisions for consistency and other factors. We’re examining our off-topic policy and will be moving to make its application more transparent.

And we are working to make our comment spaces more welcoming and more connected with our editorial work. We’re trialling different ways for journalists to be involved in conversations that can sometimes be overwhelming purely because of the volume of comments, and we’re working to make sure that we open comments and encourage conversation only where it can be well managed - and where we can listen. We have started digging deep into the data we have on how users behave in our comment threads, and will be publishing some preliminary findings next week as part of our series, The web we want.

All these changes are only the beginning of a larger process. Building a community is a difficult endeavour even under perfect conditions, and changing the way a community works once it has been established is even more difficult. Fostering constructive debate on topics that are often flashpoints for severe disagreement is harder still: it is easier to allow one side to drown out another, and for an echo chamber to form around those with the loudest and most persistent voices. Smaller communities are - for the most part - both easier to manage and calmer; one of the side-effects of the Guardian’s global reach is a global community below the line, which can come together positively or with great antagonism depending on the topic to hand.

Since our change in strategy to reduce the number of threads open on contentious topics, there has not been a major reduction in the numbers of comments we receive - but we have seen some changes in tone. There are more diverse voices emerging in these threads, and while they are still divisive and divided conversations, there is (on the whole) more engagement with the issues, and less abuse. Of course, this is still a work in progress, and there is a great deal more to do.

But we can’t do it without your help, or your input. After all, you are responsible for the conversations you have, and the way you choose to engage with the Guardian. And while we know that only a tiny proportion of our audience ever comments, we know that many more people read the comments. So we would like your opinions: what would you like to see the Guardian’s comments become? How would you like to see the community develop, or change - or stay the same? Please share your thoughts with us: they will help us to work on what the next phase of development will be.

For more information about the moderation of individual comments please see our Community Standards and FAQs. Further questions should be addressed to moderation@theguardian.com or opinion.moderation@theguardian.com