One of the things I like most about The Verge is the sense of community in our comments and forums, but we're kind of missing it lately. It's a particular concern for me as we hire new people to aggressively expand into covering entertainment and science and transportation; the amount of negativity I see in our comments as we try new things is going to hold us back. It takes a meaningful toll on reporters and editors who are trying new things, especially new folks who haven't written for sites as popular or as well-commented as ours. It's a bad feedback loop, even though our tech coverage is as strong as ever and we have lots of other data that says expanding our coverage is the right thing to do — June traffic is up 50 percent from last year, for example.

So I might just shut things down until we're done with this phase of growth.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm talking about the comments under our articles, not the forums. I think the forums have tons of potential to grow right alongside the site itself.

The other option is for me to actually RELY on our community to create a less negative atmosphere and help us build all these new sections out as we hire, but I can't do that without knowing it's going to work. And I'm not so sure about that right now; I need to be convinced.

So: how should we proceed?