OK, we've just switched to the new Disqus system. All comments from the previous 12 hours are history. But they'll re-post when the system runs through the re-posting of the approximate 500,000 comments in storage. All comments from this point are live again. The list of new features of Disqus is pretty long, and if you want to dig in, there’s a great guide here. I’ll highlight a few things we think commenters will really like:

• Disqus lets you reply directly to another comment, and your new post will nest right below it in that comment thread. This makes it a lot easier to follow (or hide) individual conversations, and is a feature that many readers have wanted for some time. You can even @mention other readers in your comments.
• Readers have also asked for an editing function, so they can fix mistakes in their own comments. This is built into Disqus.
• One more thing our readers have wanted: the ability to “like” other comments. That’s built in, too.

Oopsy: Just realilzed that I was wrong re: re-registering. SR Blogmeister MikeT sez (under this thread): "Folks don’t need to re-register — ff you’re logged in with your regular ol’ Spokesman.com account, you’ll be able to comment as usual. If you have a Disqus account and want to show up as that from now on, you can link up your Spokesman.com account and Disqus account as long as you used the same e-mail address for both: http://help.disqus.com/custome... "