We love our commenters. Seriously. The folks who read and respond to this site provide not only feedback and interesting conversation, but frequently offer invaluable tips. DCist wants to make the city more accessible to its citizens and visitors; we think that making DCist accessible is important to that effort.

With all that said, we think most of you will agree that our comment threads occasionally get out of hand. There’s some trolling; there’s some spam; there’s more than a little whining. And sometimes there’s some really objectionable, hurtful things said — all from behind a cloak of not just pseudonymity, but anonymity.

We think this detracts from the site, so we’re doing something about it. Starting tomorrow, DCist commenters will have to log into a TypeKey account in order to leave a comment. You’ve been able to use TypeKey all along on this site, but it’ll now be mandatory. It’s easy, it’s free, it’s pseudonymous, and you’ll only have to log in once every two weeks. We hope that every commenter will register with TypeKey and continue to contribute to the conversations on DCist. The only requirement is a valid email address.

Our hope is that by tying folks’ statements to a single identity, commenters will choose their words more carefully. If you leave a comment in thread A, folks in thread B will remember who you are and what you said. Our best commenters already do this, maintaining a consistent identity and taking responsibility for their words. We hope everyone else will join them in these good habits.

But our first priority is to maintain the site’s openness — so consider this a week-long trial run. And, as always, we hope you’ll let us know what you think in comments.

(And before any conspiracy theorists points to specific threads or cite Rob’s departure, allow us to point out that this change has been in the works for quite a while.)