Current.com Blog | February 01, 2010 | 261 comments

Feature release: Commenting upgrade [UPDATED]

Hello Currenteers!

 

 

In case you haven't noticed, today's feature release is serving up some major upgrades to our commenting system. Discussions on Current.com are extremely important to us, and we've come up with a few updates to existing functionality as well as some new enhancements that will help pave the way for the months to come.

 

Let's take a quick tour:

 

Comment Voting: That's right, comment voting is now officially implemented on Current.com.

 

 

Each comment will have an individual score based on the aggregate count of votes, so for example: If a comment has 51 votes up, and 52 votes down, a "-1" will display. So, what are you waiting for? Reward some discussion-driving folks by giving them a coveted vote up. Find someone detracting from the discussion at hand? Give 'em a vote down.

 

Sorting Options: Why not offer some alternative ways to sort comments? 

 

 

We're changing the default sort on all threads to "Newest" first, this way you'll always see the latest discussions on the main landing page. But, for those of you who prefer to read threads in the order in which they developed, you can always sort by "Oldest" as well. And since we implemented comment voting, it would be a travesty not to offer a sort by "Popular" option. We think this will be an interesting way to find new and insightful commentary on Current.com threads as our discussions develop. Try it out!

 

[UPDATE] There has been some concerns about the switch from "Oldest" to "Newest" sorting, and I thought it would be best to clarify. For this iteration we are setting our sort to "Newest" for all threads, but we are investigating ways to store your preferred sort in a cookie. This means if you prefer one sort over the others, you will be able to make these stick across the site.

 

Replies and Pagination: We've made a couple important changes to the way that replies and pagination works on Current.com. 

 

 

All reply threads are now "open" as a default, you are no longer restricted to replying only to the original commenter, and we've changed some of the design aspects for replies as well. In our older system, any time you reply to someone on a thread you were automatically replying to the first comment on the thread. Now you can elect a person to reply to, and their name will appear at the beginning of your comment. You'll also notice that replies longer indent on discussion threads -- instead, the avatars in reply comments are slightly smaller in size.

 

These decisions were largely made to help facilitate the ability to sort by popular. For example, a reply to a thread could be more popular than all of the comments on the entire thread. This allows us to display each comment ranked on popularity, while still retaining it's reply status.

 

Additionally, we've done away with pagination. That's right, each comment now loads by default, which means your scrolling finger will now be ready for a workout.

 

[UPDATE] How do I edit and reply to comments? Our admin controls for commenting are now hidden when reading through threads. When you mouse over a comment, you should see the vote buttons light up, as well as a "reply" button below the posted comment. If you happen to be the comment author, you should see both "edit" and "delete" functionality in this mouse over state.

 

[UPDATE] There seems to be some confusion around our decision to default to open threads without pagination, so let me clear a few things up. First, going this route actually fixes one of the bigger issues we've had since introducing threaded commenting -- broken email links. Now when you receive a comment notification email, the link you receive will actually direct you to the comment in line. Giving you the preference to hide replies on threads is something we are investigating, but there are some hurdles involved in accomplishing this without re-breaking our email notifications.

 

[UPDATE] Questions about the comments that have been removed from commenting threads have been popping up. We're now displaying wherever a comment is removed, and this includes comments removed as violations of community guidelines as well as comments removed by the original poster. Why? Well, whenever a comment needs to be removed, the replies to that comment often have to be pulled as well. By showing that a comment was removed, the replies can stay live as long as they meet our community guidelines. Eventually we would like to add additional clarification between removals for abuse purposes, and removals by the original comment author.

 

 

Like the changes? Have some feedback? Please be sure to share your reactions in the comments below, and if you notice any bugs or have any recommendations visit our Get Satisfaction support page and leave us some feedback.

 

Thanks!

mario

 

  1. groups:
    Current.com Blog
  2. tags:
    Current.com,  Comments,  why,  Feature Release,  4 more
  3. recommended by:
    current89
  4.     
    |

261 comments // Feature release: Commenting upgrade [UPDATED]

123
201 - 261 of 261
mario_a
more from Current.com Blog:
from the community

top videos