So you're commenting on Kotaku. Congratulations! But did you know that aside from speaking your mind and saying mean things about us (do we not bleed?), there are other things you can do as well?
Let's take a look at them. First, you're going to want to access your profile. You can do that by logging in, then clicking the profile button (pictured above). Easy.
That will bring you to your profile screen, pictured above. From here, you can do all kinds of stuff.
1. Manage and edit your profile. This will let you upload/change your profile avatar, edit your personal information (like Gamertag, Steam ID, etc), display a website of your choosing and filter the kind of things that appear on...
2. The main "feed" page. You can edit what's displayed here by clicking on the comments, posts, favourites, friends and followers buttons on #1, and basically, it's there to highlight your comments, the comments of friends, posts from particular Kotaku authors, that kind of thing. Three of the four pictured there are red because they're my posts, but the third one down is what the comments look like when they're fed into the page.
3. Your "friends". When you're reading a post on Kotaku, and pop down to the comments section, you'll see that underneath other commenter's profile names is a little icon. Shaped like a love heart. If you like what you're reading, click that and you'll be "following" them, which means that whenever somebody you like posts a comment, you can edit your "feed" page (ie #2) to display their comments, so you can track them down and read/reply to them.
A "friend", then, is somebody you're following that's following you as well. Awww, isn't that sweet!
4. Your "followers". We pretty much just covered #4.
So, that's how you make friends on Kotaku and keep track of them. Now let's find out how you can keep in touch with them.
From #1 (the taskbar at the top of your profile page), click on "messages". That will take you to the screen above. It's basically the same as a personal messaging system on a forum, except it collects them all in a single thread. From this thread, you can view your messages, reply to messages sent to you, delete old messages, and select whether you want your message/reply to be private (so only the two people communicating can see it), or whether you don't care if the world knows about it.
So next time you need to clear something up with somebody, or just say HELLO, the messages system is probably a better way to go about it than clogging up the comments section.
And...that's about it! There are a few fancier tricks for more advanced users, like subscribing to RSS feeds (hint: the feed button is at the top right of the profile screen), but for the most part, that's all you need to know.
Oh, apart from this. You must read this. We'd recommend you read it on a daily basis. No. Hourly basis.
For those who aren't Kotaku commenters, but would like to be...create an account and start commenting. The world won't see your comments, but we will. If you're sticking to the rules (and actually contributing something to the conversation), it shouldn't be long before somebody gets around to activating your account.