Autobiography required by Commenters

I noticed that many Google News stories have gone from having hundreds of comments to one or two. I tried to post a comment on two stories today and find out why. The publications wanted me to register and give my life history (ABC News). I think I even have one of the accounts, but it has been so long I do not remember how to login. Though it appears even using that login was going to require several pages of additional detail (ZDnet). Do users not want to give out this information, spend the time involved in filling them out, or can’t remember hundreds of login profiles? So if you want to be at the top of the comment area now is the time, though you might want to find some software to manage the user ids and passwords.