Nothing wrong with the Toronto Star closing their comments, the Toronto Sun closed their comments.

Toronto Star leans to the left of political scale
Toronto Sun leans to the right of political scale

Both had total garbage in most comments.

Both TOStar & TOSun had trolls among them and since Toronto Star's parent companty is the biggest media outlet out there in Canada, it gets targeted by trolls.

During our recent federal elections in Canada and our 2014 municipal election in Toronto, it was full of trolls. right-wing trolls would bomb out the TOStar comments and left-wing trolls would bomb out the TOSun's comments.

WPTavern comments are nothing comparing to TOStar/TOSun comments. Imagine Jeff makes a post tonight (at 02:17 as I type this), he goes to bed, and wakes up at 10am. Imagine he then has 8,000 comments to moderate. Is he going to go through all 8,000? Of course not.

Obviously TOStar & TOSun each must have more than one person moderating the comments.

I don't know about media outlets in your communities but both TOStar and TOSun have "Letters to the Editor" sections.

I wrote an article on Crimea annexation by Russia. I went to bed, by the time I woke up, went to work and so forth...I had 65,850 comments on it. It took me most of the afternoon to go through those comments.

Main reason why comments get shut down is because it can be too much work to moderate them.

If you delete a comment, that author will bitch about free speech.

Even though the site is a private website and no one has any right to comment, only what the website owner gives out on his/her own website.