[clydethefrog]

De Correspondent, a Dutch publication, their comments section is only accessible to paying members. They treat their subscribers as a community and usually an article ends with a question to the reader to discuss.

Their publisher has a typical Medium post about their strategy. As a subscriber I would say it works, unless the topic is already really controversial.

https://medium.com/@ejpfauth/lets-give-reader-comments-anoth...

[type0]

I think it's great giving their subscribers a voice, however I don't agree that it's good to only be open to paying members. It's better to have something like subscriber accounts with unlimited comments and regular user accounts with limited number of comments.