The Times is now turning off comments on all 'gender' articles

They have turned the comments on this morning on an article about JKR and twittter, although they are pre-moderated

No they aren’t pre moderated. I just posted and it was published straight away.

Yes the comments are back on. Our complaints obviously worked.

The comments have returned

I suspect the editor has supported having the comments, the journalist allowed comments, the OpenWeb people removed them, and the editor has started work this morning and reinstated them. That's my hope, anyway...

And I can still approve comments.

I can't see them on the Daily Mail website for some reason, but maybe it's because I don't give it time to load.

I can still see the comments

“ @Cuck00soup

They have turned the comments on this morning on an article about JKR and twittter, although they are pre-moderated.”

That was short lived! Off again,
I will say good bye to The Times.

Comments on this article are open and calling out Khan’s hypocrisy. The article is related to women’s rights and single sex spaces. The issue runs across a large number of areas and at this rate comments will need to be turned off on loads of articles. I wonder how long they will stay open on this one.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sadiq-khan-primary-schools-must-act-misogyny-8ck0qqg26

Good grief! Evidently the monitors were late getting up as there were a range of comments under the JKR Starmer article earlier.

Thanks for the link. Comments are now turned off!

Thanks for the link. Comments are now turned off!

Looks like they've switched them all back on, Presumably the prospect of losing all those ex Guardian readers and women who value freedom of speech made them think twice. They've obviously decided to face down whoever was threatening them - OpenWeb or the trans activists?

They have turned the comments on this morning on an article about JKR and twittter, although they are pre-moderated.

One of the commenters suggests she has had a reply to her email from the editor.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e6004e12-a31d-11ec-9096-4a7874fe33ed?shareToken=006c66663e94f8a53f2720a40e8ee2ca

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10605367/Parents-fury-32-650-year-American-School-London-teaches-64-genders.html

350 comments- largely shocked as to why schools are teaching that there are 64 genders and sex doesn’t matter in sport - and why this one in particular is not changing its stance after a drubbing from
Ofsted.

Gah - I’ll be cancelling my subscription over this tomorrow too.

A lot of the comments that would appear in The Times were often similar to those here - perhaps no surprise! But the Mail ones are far less restrained.

Are there fewer of them..? There were thousands of likes for best rated comments on this JKR article I saw on there:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10605735/JK-Rowling-slams-Keir-Starmer-Labour-leader-says-trans-women-women.html
500-odd comments with some with 13,000 or so likes

This one has about 800 comments. Best rated at about 5000 likes:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10604829/Keir-Starmer-calls-respectful-debate-controversial-issue.html

This one doesn't have so many. Only about 180 comments. Best rated at about 2500 likes:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10604249/Tory-police-commissioner-slams-ridiculous-bid-Crispin-Blunt-silence-womens-rights.html

I suppose it must be quite intensive for the moderators if they have to check each one and there are hundreds and hundreds to go through, some of them with replies to comments. The Mail is hard to tell as their website is updated so much, it might depend on how high up the front page a story is? Maybe.

With other hot topics, I do remember that SW complained about this in The Times:

Teachers ordered to avoid ‘biased’ views of BLM and Stonewall

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a3c27a26-8f67-11ec-8d28-50e05b644342?shareToken=8e95b3d6d0008937d94f7be638f877d33_

The complaints:

https://mobile.twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/14942550318933032988_

I think it could or could not have been a valid complaint. It depends on your reading of the guidance sets issued by the DfE. IIRC, The Times changed the headline later in the day online.

The Mail also seems to be allowing far fewer ‘moderated in advance’ comments on articles covering ‘sensitive’ topics. (Gender issues and Meaghan Markle are two examples.) They let about seven through, six which are likely to be popular and one unpopular, with up and downvotes confirming reader opinion. Up and downvotes can then number in the thousands

I wonder if there is an underlying reason why MSM has suddenly become more sensitive about the comments they host. I suspect it is not just the Times.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/39dd3cd2-a226-11ec-a401-6c0b998e6c9b?shareToken=2001728e67489ff57ebcc19cc016de79

I'm going to cancel my subscription over this.

I unsubscribed yesterday. You can do it by email and put your reasons in writing rather than relying on a telephone operator to pass them along. They try and make you call (I’ve done that before and unless you’ve got half an hour for the sales pitch, I’d give it a swerve). But I told them I wasn’t interested in discussing anything, they had the reasons why I was unsubscribing, and if they took further amounts out of my account they would be considered unauthorised.
I have also posted a comment on the dedicated comments page.

I was just thinking that if there's no discussion allowed in those comments section (it's where I find out a lot about these issues!) then for me there's absolutely no point in subscribing. You can do that thing on a desktop computer where you paste in a url, archive it quickly before it asks you to log in, and so can read without a subs.
Might call them tomorrow.

@OvaHere found a good comment under this one:

The civil service isn’t working. Here’s how to fix it.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cbcf66ce-a24e-11ec-a401-6c0b998e6c9b?shareToken=ebd4303d54d91dc14904f9c05ee075f77_

"What does Mr Slater say about his actions in funding / promoting political lobby groups to schools (Mermaids, Stonewall etc ) via DfE policy advice? Did it not breach the Nolan principle of integrity when he received hospitality / awards in return for promoting their ideology directly to children and schools?
Has this unprecedented access to children in schools (political groups have perviously been restricted from pushing their beliefs to children) influenced the recent unexplained massive increase in teenage girls deciding their bodies must be male and need fixing?
The Cass Report's interim findings raise the question as to the role of schools in what looks like an unprecedented issue of social contagion amongst teenagers - a well known phenomenon in other areas."

The absolute brass neck of Slater slagging off the civil service, which is partly "not working" due to being Stonewalled to the eyeballs. Glass houses, stones etc.

I think they may have switched it off for articles concerning race and wokeness too. May be wrong but that's my impression. I suspect it's about volume of comments that need reviewing. But just a guess.