Comments policy: We still want to hear from you - we just needed to make some changes

A recent spam attack led us to closing comments on all articles across The Conversation's seven sites. Now that things have settled down we have introduced a more nuanced approach in a bid to manage the threat of another attack.

We will, in future, open comments only on some articles. Our constraint is simply that all comments need to be read by The Conversation Africa's editors to ensure that they are respectful and constructive and comply with our community standards. Given the size of the team and our capacity, it's clear that we don't have enough resources to ensure 24/7 comment moderation. The spam attack brought this home to us.

We will endeavour to open as many comments as manageable for at least 72 hours. Your thoughts, engagement, contributions and discussions are incredibly valuable – to our editors, authors and fellow readers – and we think this approach will give an opportunity for this to continue under articles that we publish.

Our social media channels are also open for you to engage further with our articles: find us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and LinkedIn .

By Jabulani Sikhakhane, Editor, The Conversation Africa