Top 5 comment-generating Tribune stories of 2012

2012 has been an active year for Salt Lake Tribune readers. You've had heated debates over the election on our story comments, talked to (and about) us on Twitter. We end the year with thousands of you as Facebook fans and Pinterest followers. Our social community is certainly growing.

The most retweeted tweet from our @sltrib account was this announcement of our editorial board endorsement of Barack Obama prior to the presidential election:

"The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board has endorsed @Barack Obama over @Mitt Romney http://t.co/kt7vKwBO #Election2012

We send out an average of 989 tweets per month from @sltrib. Our most popular day and time to tweet? Thursdays at 1 p.m.

The five hashtags we used most often in 2012 were #slc, #utpol, #utsnow, #utahcrime and #aggies. And — something our copy editors would likely be proud of — 198 of our tweets were exactly 140 characters. (Thanks to TweetStats.com for that.)

As for story comments, Disqus tells us 41,600 of you have submitted 1 million comments in 2012, and more than 3 million like votes were made on those 1 million comments.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the stories that got you talking were most often about politics or the LDS church. The top five most commented-upon Salt Lake Tribune stories of 2012:

1. • Obama endorsement: Too Many Mitts (2,430 people made 10,000 comments)

2. • Mormon group quits LDS Church en masse (744 people made 5,500 comments)

3. • Reid: Romney not the face of Mormonism (651 people made 3,400 comments)

4. • Mormon women plan 'Wear Pants to Church Day' (571 people made 3,300 comments)

5. • Mormons march in Gay Pride Parade to build bridges (559 people made 2,300 comments) Want more numbers? Watch our tweets for #sltrib2012 for all our year-end roundup stories and stats.