Please, G & M, don't make these  wrong changes to the way readers post comments.
It was perfectly good the way it was.
These new changes make commenting too slow and unwieldy.
Further, the emoticons are silly and childish. Showing the names of those who disagreed will increase personal vitriol.
The best thing about comments was thumbs up or thumbs down because that way a person knew if his or her opinions were popular or not.
  It's now difficult to find if anyone has replied to a post.
Receiving an email notifying a poster that he has received a response was also an excellent feature. 
  The best features have been removed, replaced by bad ones.
   Many readers have now left this website, as shown by the large decrease in the number of comments posted in this Letters to the Editor page.
  Please cancel the changes. They are time-consuming, childish and ridiculous.
  I question the intentions of the G & M in making these frustrating changes.