SB Nation Communities Integration

Overview

Vox Media partnered with The Coral Project to bring a reimagined commenting and community system to SB Nation’s expansive sports network. Rolled out across 300+ sites, this integration aimed to support loyal fan conversations while balancing moderation needs and user safety, fostering a more engaging and trustworthy environment for sports fans.

Problem

Legacy comment systems were chaotic, with high moderation burdens, limited tooling, and poor user experience. Communities often thrived despite the platform, not because of it. Editors needed a solution that would enable authentic fan conversations while reducing toxicity and protecting the integrity of discussions.

Product Approach

The project integrated Coral’s open-source community platform, tailored to SB Nation’s editorial identity and scale. UX goals included a responsive, accessible design, robust moderation dashboards, and context-based reply threading. Collaboration between Coral and Vox Media’s design and engineering teams customized the visual identity, trust-building tools, and onboarding flows to fit SB Nation’s diverse fan base.

Designing the Experience

Key principles guided the design of the community commenting experience:

• Safety and belonging – embedding community norms into interaction design to foster respectful engagement.
• Transparency – clear moderation actions and visible community guidelines to build trust.
• Identity – user profiles that carry reputation across teams and topics, encouraging accountability.
• Scalability – tools that support both niche team blogs and high-traffic hubs seamlessly.
• Accessibility – responsive design ensuring fans can participate across all devices.

My Role

• Led design efforts for Vox Media’s implementation of Coral, collaborating closely with newsroom stakeholders and engineering teams.
• Conducted user research sessions with editors and superfans to understand needs and pain points.
• Developed prototypes of commenting and moderation interfaces, ensuring design consistency across SB Nation’s network.
• Crafted contributor onboarding experiences and tone-setting copy to guide user behavior.
• Supported editorial training initiatives and coordinated rollout communications.

Impact

• Reduced moderation incidents by leveraging built-in safety and trust tools.
• Increased user retention and improved comment quality metrics.
• Strengthened community loyalty across local and national team sites.
• Established a design precedent that was later adopted by other Vox Media brands.

How Coral differs from legacy commenting systems

• Community-first rather than traffic-first.
• Verified, reputation-based identity.
• Moderation tools built for scale and empathy.
• Design grounded in trust, not friction.