Comments would be great with upvoting/Liking/popularity ranking
I think this may explain why a story like OS X Update 10.8.2 gets 154 comments on another rumors site, and 11 on this one. The ONLY thing I read are the most popular comments, there's no way to read all the comments in an article, and most of them aren't helpful at all. This is the way most every site sorts their comments. Just as you curate the content you post, I'd like at least an option to have the comments curated as well. I guarantee you will notice a significant jump in your site's traffic if you would just allow upvoting/Liking of forum comments.
Of course, one step beyond even that is to use a third party like Disqus which allows people to comment using any number of logins.
But to not have any option to curate comments at all is the main reason I keep going to other rumor sites instead.
Comments
Originally Posted by Tux Kapono
The ONLY thing I read are the most popular comments, there's no way to read all the comments in an article, and most of them aren't helpful at all. This is the way most every site sorts their comments. Just as you curate the content you post, I'd like at least an option to have the comments curated as well.
I'm just speaking for myself here and not for the site itself. My view here in no way represents that of the site owners:
SCREW THAT IDEA.
Know why? It's pathetic. It's a jump on the social networking bandwagon. It artificially gives more importance to comments posted earlier than equally or infinitely more relevant or important comments posted later. It is not equality. It is not how a forum should operate, and it's not how society itself should operate.
It's not how things should work.
I guarantee you will notice a significant jump in your site's traffic if you would just allow upvoting/Liking of forum comments.
You'll notice we do. But it's a bad idea itself.
Of course, one step beyond even that is to use a third party like Disqus which allows people to comment using any number of logins.
They can do that HERE, too, you know. The difference between a real forum like us and a stupid comment section like that is the moderation actually happens here.
But to not have any option to curate comments at all is the main reason I keep going to other rumor sites instead.
To recap, you DO have this option, and adding more features in this category is (again, in my opinion), the polar opposite of what we should be doing.
Now that's another reason why the other site gets 154 comments for a comment vs 11 in this one if this is the nature of conversation on this site. That's the last time I post a comment in this forum. Goodbye AI.
Originally Posted by Tux Kapono
Now that's another reason why the other site gets 154 comments for a comment vs 11 in this one if this is the nature of conversation on this site. That's the last time I post a comment in this forum. Goodbye AI.
Yep. We get "fewer" comments because the people here actually speak their mind instead of mindless "me too!"-ism and pointlessly click upvotes and downvotes without then posting their opinions or rebuttals on the topic.
If that's the society you want and the future you want, a real forum probably isn't what you want.
Some blogs do but not discussion forums. If you take comments out of context like on Youtube, you often can't see what the comment really meant nor why it was upvoted.
Plus, an upvoted comment is only popular with the upvoters and that might not represent a majority. If someone here comments negatively about trolls, it gets upvoted by a certain crowd and if someone makes a negative comment about Apple, it gets voted by another crowd. Just look at Engadget to see a broken comment system where nearly every article gets moronic comments about Apple upranked by hundreds of people and it reflects really badly on the site.
The thumb icon lets you upvote but there's no sorting based on it. More people might visit but the comments will degrade to the likes of 'lol, Apple suing Samsung again, guess they don't like competition' and those comments will jump to the front page as the hoardes of teenagers who can only afford an Android phone and have poor reading skills yet can manage to click a thumb icon descend on the forum to educate the 'sheep'.