Twenty-four years ago, we launched New Jersey Online in the middle of a crippling snowstorm. Today, we’re known as NJ.com and we are the largest news and information site in New Jersey, averaging more than 1 million unique visitors each day.

Back in 1996, public forums — aka message boards — were a big part of our appeal. People had things to say and our site was a place for all comers, whether the topic was gardening secrets, high school sports or town gossip.

Over time, message boards gave way to site comments that traveled directly with stories. Our commenting platform also has evolved, from heavily moderated by our experts to rarely moderated to machine moderated. At the same time, the often positive spirit of commenting steadily declined and we moved our resources elsewhere as the commenting audience continued to shrink.

Today, only about 2% of NJ.com’s total audience reads our comments and only 0.03% posts comments.

At their best, the NJ.com comments were a place to learn more about a story, add or correct information that we missed and engage in a meaningful, respectful debate. At their worst, our comments were a place none of us would want to spend time. They were a place for racism, misogyny and hatred — a place to perpetuate the worst stereotypes about our state, our neighborhoods and our people. It was never our intent, but we ultimately gave a small number of people a license to say things they would never say in their workplace or at their dinner table without the cloak of anonymity.

In short, New Jersey deserves better.

On Thursday morning, NJ.com will remove comments from the site. Archived stories also will have comments eliminated. We understand this will be upsetting to some of the people who read and post comments, but our editors will continue working to find the best ways to engage and hear your voice.

You can find more details here in our FAQ, and the How to Reach Us link is a great resource when you have something to share with one of our journalists.

We continue to look for ways to grow our reader engagement and welcome your input. If you’d like to help us, please take this brief survey.

Of course, we’re also still engaging with our millions of followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

We’ll see you there.

Kevin Whitmer is NJ Advance Media’s Senior VP for Content, Expansion and Development. He may be reached at kwhitmer@njadvancemedia.com.

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