An Online Comments Section Where Everybody Knows Your Screen Name

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When Sivaram Pochiraju told a group of friends that he and his wife were having a difficult week, Janet Cathcart reassured him that the couple had the support of “a large extended family.”

Lorie Robinson turns to the same group of friends for a dose of drama. “It’s like a soap opera,” she said. “You start watching and you need to know what happens next week.”

After John Collinge’s wife, Zandra, died last year, he felt compelled to share the news with the same group. The response, he said, “absolutely touched me and helped me through the sense of loss.”

None of these widely scattered people — Mr. Pochiraju lives in Hyderabad, India; Ms. Cathcart, in Chapel Hill, N.C.; Ms. Robinson, outside Brisbane, Australia; and Mr. Collinge, in Bethesda, Md. — have ever met. They know one another through the online comments section of The New York Times’s Metropolitan Diary, a column that draws tens of thousands of readers each week.

I have been moderating comments at The Times since 2008, deciding which to approve and which to reject. It is turbulent territory, with articles about politics and other contentious topics often touching off robust conversations — to say the least.

Metropolitan Diary is different, its comment section a beacon of warmth that one reader likened to a city stoop, where people weigh in on what they have just read, but also reflect on daily life and trade stories of their own.

“Every Saturday night, wherever I am on the planet, Metro Diary tucks me in as I smile myself to sleep,” Jerry Malsh, who posts as “Guido” from Cincinnati, wrote in a comment this year about looking forward to waking up to the column on Sunday morning.

Metropolitan Diary has gone through several iterations since making its debut in 1976. Its current version — five reader-contributed, New York City-centric items illustrated by Agnes Lee — began in 2019.

The column has fans all over.

In a recent interview with The Atlantic, the actor Tom Hanks said of the mix of quirky, funny, touching anecdotes, “Oh, God, I can’t get enough of it.”

Contacted by email, Mr. Hanks wrote that although he had not been moved to post a comment on the Diary, he understood the sense of human connection that prompted others to do so.

“I’ve never read the MD without thinking I have one to offer,” he wrote in an email. “Since so many of them begin with something like ‘On a freakishly cold day in late October in 1977 … ’ Oh, man! I had something like that! I recall a doozy! Such a kindness! What happened to that lady?”

The cast of frequent commenters is close-knit but hardly insular. It has grown over time with the addition of new voices. Many of the few dozen regulars are in their 60s or 70s, and retired. Mr. Collinge, 72 and a retired officer for the C.I.A., said he began reading the column 10 years ago for its “whimsy.”

“I think at our stage of life, we’re just more tranquil,” he said, adding, “We don’t take the baggage of our professional lives with us.”

Some frequent commenters said the pandemic had strengthened the group’s bond. Mr. Pochiraju, a 75-year-old retired electrical engineer who lived in Queens for four years before returning to India, said he started commenting on Times articles as a hobby when he stopped working, and was already posting about Metropolitan Diary when the pandemic began. He soon noticed that people were asking about one another’s well-being.

“If someone didn’t write for a week, we used to get worried,” Mr. Pochiraju said. “During the pandemic, my cousin and a number of my wife’s cousins died. Our community supported us. Even though we are all faceless, we feel like a family.”

One thing Metropolitan Diary regulars appreciate is that unlike with newsier articles, for which comments typically close within 24 hours of the article’s publication, comments on the column stay open for four days.

“I would be embarrassed to tell you how frequently I refresh the comments,” said Ms. Cathcart, 79, a retired private secretary who posts as “JSC.”

“There are an awful lot of kind people, very intelligent and well-educated and I learn from them,” Ms. Cathcart said. “I’ve gotten oboe music recommendations.”

Though the Diary’s appeal is global, some commenters appreciate the New York City flavor. Ms. Robinson, 64, (who posts as “Lorie R”) and is a retired catering manager, visited Manhattan often while growing up in Schenectady, N.Y. Since she lives in Australia now, she values the connection to the city that the column provides. But she also finds comfort in the group.

“It’s nice to go to someplace where people are nice and care about each other in a world that might not always be kind these days,” she said. “You might have a few little arguments here and there. Not everybody agrees all the time. But it’s sort of like a family in that way.”

John Ramirez, 73, a onetime trash supervisor and former teacher who lives in Port Hueneme, Calif., and comments as “The Chief from Cali,” feels much the same way.

“Put ’em in a lineup, I wouldn’t know who they were,” Mr. Ramirez said. “But they’re good friends. There’s a whole group of people that, I would miss their commentary and their viewpoints of life if I didn’t see them anymore.”