Feature release: Commenting upgrade

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 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!

Replies and Pagination: We've made a couple important changes to the way replies and pagination work 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.

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