Anyone else noticed that comments have virtually stopped under this new format?

There used to be dozens of lively debates taking place on these pages, now I see almost none. Does the Patch think this kind of indirect censorship is going to help them in the long run? The comments of the people were often more informative than the articles and kept the hit count high as people came back to the page to reply. I think this new format may end up killing the patch as ad rates drop due to the lack of web hits and readership.

They should have stuck with the motto of “it it isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it”.