The Guardian’s web we want series has taken a look at the darker side of online conversations, but most commenters bring insight, knowledge and enthusiasm to the debate. Nine of the best explain what keeps them coming back to the threads below the line.

Sue Smith

School science technician, 50, York. Comments on: politics, sex and love, food. Username: Orbitalgirl

Whereas most commenters tend to focus their energies on one area of the site, Sue Smith has decidedly eclectic commenting habits. She is equally likely to be found below the line of food and lifestyle stories and the love and sex advice columns – “I like to reassure people that they’re normal,” she says – and political articles, particularly those about Jeremy Corbyn.

“Jeremy represents what in my opinion the Labour party was founded for,” she says. “When he was elected I could have cried, I was so excited.”

Smith says that while the tone of comments under the lifestyle and love sections tends to be “warm, open and quite kind”, articles about politics tend to attract comments that are “much harsher, much more cut and thrust”.

This does not bother Smith, who says she will often intervene if she sees someone “getting flamed” by others on the site.

“I will step in and defend them because it’s just online bullying. It’s so easy to be a keyboard warrior.”

For Smith, commenting appeals because it allows her to give her opinion, participate in a community and respond to her favourite writers. “I have a bit of a crush on Jay Rayner. But my favourite thing is Rhik [Samadder] and his gadgets. I set a reminder on Rhik’s contributions. He has a very large female following. I love him,” says Smith.

“I’m the kitchen gadget queen and I do own a few things he’s reviewed. The burger thing he did the other week, the things he said were exactly the things I thought about it.”

Michael Cosgrove

Translator, 62, Lyon. Comments on: politics. Username: Fripouille

Michael Cosgrove estimates that he comments on the Guardian site “six and a half days a week”, writing up to 50 comments a day.

Since he started engaging below the line in 2009, Cosgrove says, his attitude towards commenting has changed dramatically.

“When I started, as soon as I was confronted with aggression I gave as much as I got. But I’ve changed that over the years,” he says.

The turning point for Cosgrove came a few years ago when one of his comments was moderated – deemed inappropriate and removed from the site – and he was given a temporary ban from commenting.

“I deserved it. I should’ve known better. I’d probably been drinking. It was a bloody horrible experience and a bloody good lesson. I thought, ‘You’ve got to do better boy, you’re nearly 60!’ I wrote to [the moderators] and said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and they let me off, they were very lenient with me.”

Now Cosgrove feels a responsibility, as someone who has been part of the commenting community for a long time, to keep things civil.

“You’ve just got to try and persuade people that there’s a responsible way to comment. I think we owe it to ourselves, particularly those of us who have been on there for a while.”

He says he has watched other commenters change their style too: “I think you learn how to comment, I honestly believe that, and I’ve seen it happen with others. I’ve seen people mellow out.”

Caroline Gatti

English teacher, 54, United Arab Emirates. Comments on: gender equality. Username: MissEnscene

Caroline Gatti began commenting five years ago when she was working as a teacher in Oman.

“Rural Oman doesn’t have a lot going on in the evening so I rediscovered the joy of free time. I was reading more and getting into hobbies; I got a chance to dedicate more time to the Guardian,” says Gatti.

Gatti was a careful and amused reader of the comment threads under articles for quite a while before she took the plunge and began commenting herself.

“The comments were funny, wise at times, informative. With comments, you get a 360-degree take on an event all on one page, whereas in the past to get different viewpoints you’d have to go to different newspapers. That was what got me hooked as a reader.

“I noticed there were more women’s issues being discussed and they were attracting quite a – shall I say – vivacious discussion. Feminism is one of the things I do know a bit about, being a feminist, so I waded in.”

Gatti describes commenting on articles addressing gender equality as “exasperating” and “a bit tiring” and over the past five years has taken several breaks from commenting for months at a time when she’s found things too upsetting.

Particularly annoying to Gatti is the fact that so many people will argue that it is a waste of time to write about what they see as more minor manifestations of sexism when grosser injustices exist.

“It seems that before you get to talk about the topic you have to justify why you should be able to talk about that issue. Yes we know that female genital mutilation exists, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t important. Like, you don’t get people going into the football [articles] and saying: ‘Why are you talking about this frivolous thing when there’s famine and war?’”

Although she says her voice is a “drop in the ocean”, she hopes that she can inspire others with her comments. “My hope is someone else who’s sitting at home reading, who is sitting on the fence, might say: ‘What she has said isn’t out of order, she makes a good point, maybe I’m a feminist too.’”

Daniel Waweru

Communications and research officer, 37, Nairobi. Comments on: African history, politics, philosophy and religion. Username: DanielWaweru

Daniel Waweru attended university – at undergraduate, master’s and PhD level – in the UK, and it was during his PhD research that he took up commenting in a serious way.

“I had a spell of about three or four years where I commented pretty regularly. One of the things that led me to comment was seeing there was a bunch of misconceptions about something I know a lot about. I remember there was stuff about Mau Mau [the uprising that took place between 1952 and 1960 when Kenya was under British colonial rule] – it seemed a lot of people hadn’t kept up with the research.”

Waweru said that things could get a little heated below the line and at one point he was temporarily banned by moderators for a comment he wrote. Though he confesses he got around the ban by creating a second account under a pseudonym.

“I was put in the sin bin. There was a heated discussion about Churchill. I said something about him being a war criminal and that didn’t go down well: somebody reported me. They had a point, I could have said what I wanted in a less inflammatory manner.

“I think moderation is essential. It would be nice if people could handle themselves without oversight, but it just doesn’t work like that, not on the internet. I don’t always agree with it, but they get it right at least as often as they get it wrong.”

Waweru has kept up with UK news since returning to Kenya in 2013, regularly reading the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph, but his commenting has tapered off. “Work can be crazy, so I thought something has to give and it was the commenting. But very occasionally, if something catches my eye, I’ll say something.”

Rupert Harwood

Researcher, 50, Carmarthenshire. Comments on: politics. Username: RupertBH

“My first comment was a slightly drunken rant against the coalition government, which I posted when I got in from a night out with a group of Tory friends,” says Rupert Harwood.

“Their triumphalism pretty much pushed me over the edge and by the time I got home I was ready to join the online fightback against the government.”

Harwood says he must have clocked up thousands of comments over the years, commenting every time he took a tea break from his PhD research, “which, not having the best concentration in the world, was about every 30 minutes”, he admits.

Though commenting has been a big part of Harwood’s life since that infuriating night with his Tory friends in December 2011, in January he was forced to take a break when he developed severe tinnitus.

“It has had a devastating impact on my life. I was meant to be writing up an 80,000-word thesis but the constant noise has made it hard to concentrate on writing a shopping list. And one of the casualties for now has been commenting on the Guardian.”

Noticing his absence below the line, many other commenters reached out to Harwood and sent him messages of encouragement.

“Some of the leftie Guardian posters asked why I haven’t been posting and they have been very supportive. I think there’s a real community there which stretches beyond the Guardian website.

“I intend to return very soon and know that things will be looking up when I do.”

Stuart Ellis

Insurance analyst, 30, Essex. Comments on: politics. Username: BuckHucklebuck

Stuart Ellis has the same approach to commenting online that he had when he used to do standup comedy.

“I used to like being heckled because it gave me a chance to fire back and because I knew the audience were engaged,” says Ellis. “If it’s just abuse I tend to screen it because it’s the internet: it’s like complaining about smog in Beijing, it’s never going to go away. But other times you put your visor down and you’re like, ‘We’re going to spar’.”

Ellis seems to enjoy initiating the verbal jousts himself with a quick, occasionally biting wit. Why does he comment on the Guardian site? “It’s the only way to get a decent conversation in Essex,” he quips.

Sometimes though, the conversation about current issues baffles him. The Brexit campaign, for example, to his mind makes Britain look like “a tiny island with lots of angry old people on it that inexplicably ran a global empire. It’s a bit HMS Pinafore. I think at any moment the whole government could burst into song.”

Ellis comments on the Guardian 10 times a day, six or seven days a week, often on the politics live blog, which he describes as “somewhere between an old saloon bar and a Parisian salon. You get some high-brow commenters who reference the Byzantine empire and some people who come in to sling abuse.”

It is the robust intellectual debate that Ellis likes so much about commenting, which he says has become for him “an old hobby, like stamp collecting”.

“I get to test my own reasoning and see other people bat it down and make sure I’m not going crazy,” he says. “It’s the continuing process of being proved wrong that I enjoy. I will make a statement, events will transpire and I will say, ‘Well, I was wrong about that.’ It’s a sort of intellectual sadomasochism.

Hilary Sutcliffe

Thinktank director, 56, Dulwich, south London. Comments on: running. Username: HilarySutcliffe

When Hilary Sutcliffe was 52 she ran for a bus, the first running she had done in years, and discovered that it was considerably easier because she had recently lost a few stone.

She bought a running book, did her first 10k then discovered the Guardian’s running blog and started commenting underneath the articles.

“It was a midlife crisis thing. Some people leave their husbands, I took up running,” says Sutcliffe.

On the running blog, every Monday a post asks: “How was your weekend running?” and below the line several hundred comments appear from runners who share their triumphs, injuries and moments of laziness.

“It’s like having a diary. You see your own ups and downs and other people’s ups and downs. I make myself say something every week just for accountability purposes. I can’t say: ‘I’ve done sod all because I’ve been too lazy.’ One time I was going to tell them I did a half marathon when I didn’t, but I thought, ‘I just can’t lie,’ so I got out there and trained,” says Sutcliffe.

Sutcliffe says the community has been invaluable during her running career: “There are so many good people on there.” Earlier this year, when she decided to give up running it was the running blog community that kept her going.

“Eight or 10 of them said, ‘No, you’re an inspiration.’ I thought, ‘What are you talking about? I’m on the slow end and the old end,’ but people said they’re so pleased to have someone on the slow end and the old end,” says Sutcliffe.

“I wouldn’t be running if they weren’t there. If it wasn’t for them I’d be living a cushy life having a lovely time, but I’m now out in the cold running.”

Tim Middleton

Pensions consultant, 53, Islington, north London. Comments on: politics, adoption, insurance. Username: TimMiddleton

When Tim Middleton started commenting in 2007, he was initially drawn to articles on politics and the editorial cartoon. “There’s a definite community of interest there. We all get very disappointed if comments don’t open up straight away.”

He estimates posting about six comments a day – “sometimes a little more at weekends” – and confesses: “Very occasionally I’ll sneak over to the Telegraph and scrawl on their table.”

Middleton mostly comments under political stories, but also on stories related to the arts, the insurance industry (in which he works) and adoption which, as he has a five-year-old adoptive daughter, is a subject he is particularly passionate about.

Middleton has seen a huge range of events occur: “I remember when the News of the World closed and there were a lot very important articles about that. Over the period I’ve been commenting that was one of the most interesting and most intense periods of comments and I remember writing a comment: ‘It’s the Guardian wot won it’, which got a good reaction.”

While he says people “react sympathetically” a lot of the time below the line, particularly on subjects such as adoption, he is unimpressed by “unpleasant developments” in the world of commenting.

“There’s been a tendency towards astroturfing,” he says, referring to commenters sent en masse by a lobby group or government but made to look like a grassroots movement. Middleton says he has noticed this in particular when the Guardian runs an anti-Vladimir Putin story. He’s also concerned by what he sees as an uptick in the number of Islamophobic comments.

“That’s a particularly disturbing development. That didn’t happen eight, nine years ago, but there’s some serious trolling going on these days which is far more pronounced than it used to be.”

Peter Cox-Smith

Semi-retired electronics design consultant, 66, Bedfordshire. Comments on: politics, economics. Username: PeterCS

Peter Cox-Smith says he has been writing to the Guardian since the mid-1970s. “I used to write letters to the editor, so I’ve been writing to the Guardian for years.”

It took Cox-Smith a while to get the hang of the different style required for commenting online. “When you write a letter you tend to make more of an argument. That kind of thing is harder to do online. If you write something that’s long people tend to ignore it, but if you write something short and snappy you get a response,” he says.

Cox-Smith mostly comments on politics and expresses a “Liberal Democrat view”, which he guesses is a minority viewpoint on the Guardian – though he says he enjoys being challenged by people.

“I’ve definitely changed my mind on things. I won’t take someone’s opinion, but if they say, ‘Go away and read this’ and make a serious suggestion, I’ll do that. There was a big debate about privatisation of the NHS during the coalition time, so I went off and read lots of material. I don’t like the idea of full-blown privatisation, but I think that the government is very bad at running the NHS and it made me feel a bit more inclined to say that the NHS does still need to change a lot,” he says.

Cox-Smith is not as prolific as some commenters on the site, posting three or four times a week, mostly on the politics live blog. But he has been commenting for a long time – joining up in 2005.

“I was thinking about this: why do I do it? Do I do it because I think it’ll make a difference? I suppose I do believe it does make a difference. I don’t have any influence, but I do have ideas. If you keep putting the ideas out there you have to believe it’ll make a difference.”

How we chose the commenters

Top commenters were selected by cross-referencing a list of the commenters who had the highest average of “recommends per comment” with a list of those with the highest percentage of “staff picks”. People who appeared on both lists, indicating their comments were well-regarded by both other readers and Guardian staff, were approached about participating. A number either did not respond, or replied that they did not wish to participate, almost without exception because they wished to remain anonymous.

To supplement that list, moderators then identified communities in which good BTL conversations frequently took place and approached several commenters from them about participating. Those they contacted comment regularly and have been commenting for a reasonable length of time. In all of these communities, there were many commenters we could have approached.

How to comment

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Once you are signed in, click on the “join the discussion...” box under an article with comments turned on, write your words of wisdom, hit the “Post your comment” button and you’re away. You will need javascript turned on in your browser.

This FAQ deals with many of the common issues about commenting and moderation.

• This article was amended on 14 April 2016 to clarify that Daniel Waweru commenced PhD studies in the UK, but did not complete them.