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Illustration: Patrick Mariathasan / DER SPIEGEL

With SPIEGEL Debate, a new platform for reader participation has been created. In the future, our subscribers will be able to share their opinions on current debates and engage in exchange with the SPIEGEL community and the editorial team.

Clearer comment threads and debate questions defined and closely moderated by the editors ensure that just reading along is more fun – this is also possible for logged-in users without a subscription.

After months of development and a lot of feedback from our users, SPIEGEL Debatte replaces the previous comment section under articles on SPIEGEL.de. This was technically, visually and conceptually outdated. That's why we've decided to restart our users to focus more on them.

This is how SPIEGEL Debate works

  • New login: When you use SPIEGEL Debatte for the first time, you create a new profile for the community. We recommend using your first and last name. Old logins to the previous SPIEGEL community are no longer active.

  • New focus on content: In the future, reader discussions will no longer take place separately from each other under numerous individual articles. Instead, the editorial team defines debate questions on which subscribers can position themselves and discuss. Debates can be held on a central question of the day, as well as on selected other publications from the Opinion and Debate section (commentaries, columns, guest contributions). After 24 hours, we will close the comment sections, but the posts will remain visible.

  • New interactivity: Subscribers can do more than just write comments. There's also a new voting tool. The results provide a quick overview of the state of opinion within the SPIEGEL community. In addition, the community can submit its own debate proposals.

  • New clarity: An entry point to SPIEGEL Debate will be permanently placed on the homepage SPIEGEL.de, as well as in thematically appropriate articles. In addition, there is a new debate page as a central point of contact. There we list all ongoing and completed reader discussions. The comment threads are better organized and offer new sorting options. For example, you can display a list of comments specially curated by the editors.

  • New Profile: In the future, subscribers will be able to maintain a profile page with their comment history. This not only offers them their own digital home on SPIEGEL.de, but also insights into who the discussion partners are.

We are pleased if we have made you want to try out SPIEGEL Debatte, and hope to offer you a further improvement of your SPIEGEL subscription with this innovation! Feel free to let us know by e-mail how you like the new area, or write to us if you have any problems.

Please note: We would like to enable a committed, high-quality and respectful debate in the SPIEGEL community and create a discussion climate in which everyone – active users as well as passive readers – feel comfortable. That's why there are clear community guidelines, which you can read here.

Further questions can be answered here.

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