Comment on comments

Feedback requested: Please check out Intense Debate and let me know if you think this would be a Good Thing for comments here.

Comments

[cjmr]

I think that threading the comments would be very handy here, especially since you now regularly get posts with 100+ comments each. I don't think voting on comments and/or commentors would fit the dynamics of your comments threads at all. (Were there other features I missed?)

[scottbot]

Scottbot was always happy enough with Web 1.0, and feels completely threatened by any emerging paradigm shift that involves Compassionate Journalists (TM) turning to the power of technology to enforce their vision of a liberal paradise - what's next, sending us all off to the gulag because we don't want to live in a manufactured comment thread?

Scottbot is appalled.

And wondering how Scottbot's cybernetic powers can be used for total comment domination.

[Drew Habits]

I think this would be a good idea for any popular blog, especially if you are getting over a hundred comments on some posts. That screams for some sort of threading system at the very least!

[Drak Pope]

As long as the threading system can be opted out of (I hate having to click on like 600 names just so I can read the often interesting comments that populate blogs like these) then I have zero problems with that.

[cjmr]

Apparently there was another feature I missed--registration. Ugh. I hate it when blogs make me register to comment.

[Drak Pope]

Don't worry; most of them don't spam you and I don't think that Clark would give your e-mail address to goat porn spammers like a lot of bloggers that I used to visit.

[cjmr]

That's NOT what I have a problem with. It's the whole 'memorizing yet another password for access to a site that doesn't really need that level of security' that I have a problem with.

[Scottbot]

Scottbots never register - they have certain principles they will never compromise, unlike certain other people who feel that liberty is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and thus hate liberty in the pursuit of freedom.

Or something.

Nonetheless, registration means that the Scottbots will wander off to the junkyard of history - to thunderous applause.

[Zyzzyva]

I don't worry about registering - if it's not important i just use the same password as all my other unimportant accounts.

[cjmr's husband]

Just don't enforce password-nazi rules, I don't want to be forced to use one of my "good" passwords with more-than-six-letters and mixed-case-with-numbers-and-symbols.

[Spalanzani]

It seems that the system also includes avatars for commentors. That would certainly be...different. Personally I've always felt that avatars are on of the worst things about the internet, but I guess if they're limited to a certain size it might not be too bad.

[Spalanzani]

It seems that the system also includes avatars for commentors. That would certainly be...different. Personally I've always felt that avatars are on of the worst things about the internet, but I guess if they're limited to a certain size it might not be too bad.

[cjmr's husband]

In any good avatar system, the avatars must be:

1. Limited in pixel size
2. Limited in kilobyte size
3. Stored on the same server as the comments
4. Valid incarnations of Vishnu

[Spalanzani]

Wow, my first double post. I'm so proud!

Is there anything about whether or not Intense Debate would let you edit your comments? I couldn't find anything about that from the website. Comment editing is the only feature I think is really lacking here, since there's nothing worse than making a really dumb mistake in one of your comments and being unable to do anything about it but sheepishly correct it with a second comment. Still, I can see how such a feature could be easily exploited in a debate of flame war ("See? I never said anything like that!")

As for all the other features: I don't see any great advantage to them myself. Personally, I like the simplicity of the comment threads here as opposed to other sites I visit. Looking at the sample comments on the Intense Debate site, all the extra dodads just make everything seem so cluttered.

[Zyzzyva]

That would be an excellent avatar system. I shotgun Ugranarasimha!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ugranarasimha_statue_at_Hampi.JPG

[Zyzzyva]

...Except the picture is big and stored on the wrong server. Nuts.

[Spalanzani]

cjmr's husband: "4. Valid incarnations of Vishnu"

Wouldn't that limit things to, what, 9 avatars?

Dibs on Kalki!

[cjmr]

re: editing comments

One of the homeschooling BBs I'm on allows you to edit your own comments for 15 minutes after you originally post them. So I know the technology is out there--and has been for at least four years, too. I wonder why typepad isn't already utilizing it.

[Bugmaster]

Noooo they took Kalki ! Fine, I'm Krishna then.

[Zyzzyva]

Wiki calins 10 major, 22 minor, and "as well as these avatars 'the incarnations of the Lord are innumerable, like rivulets flowing from inexhaustible sources of water'". So I think we're good on that front.

...Hard luck to the guy who actually needs to find a picture of one of these, admittedly.

[Zyzzyva]

calins: um, that's "claims", of course

[ako]

I like the idea of threading comments, but the rest of it looks like a pain. Voting for comment popularity wouldn't go well here. And having to register for yet another thing sounds like a lot more work.

[Dahne]

Actually, I like the straightforward simplicity of this current scheme. No nesting nonsense, no having to click on anything just to see if it's interesting. Just a plain ongoing conversation.

[Nick Lamb]

The Vishnu requirement is acceptable, but I suggest that automatically generated avatars are appropriate technology here. There doesn't seem to be any contradiction, we simply robotically generate avatars which are suitable valid incarnations. Google "MonsterID" for some suitable software to make that possible...

I would suggest seeding the generator with the email address (if sticking to Slacktivist's current system) which also gives the additional feature of making temporary pseudonym changes (not mentioning any Montoyas) not affect the avatar displayed.

As to Intense Debate, it looks like a land grab, and land grabs are very hard on the web and the Internet in general. Ask poor Microsoft, who have repeatedly thrown billions of dollars at land grab projects like Hotmail and never made a dime from them. The fact that their reaction to someone's request for OpenID was "That's interesting" rather than "We know, OpenID enabling our site is a high priority, we should have it done by Tuesday" indicates that they don't see interoperability as revenue positive, which means when money gets tight (and it will) all your Intense Debate comments will probably vanish and be replaced by either an interstitial advert or a request for hard currency. Why take the risk?

[Josh]

Hey Everyone,
I am one of the founders of Intense Debate. I just wanted to correct some of the things said.

No registration is required! You can still comment anonymously and attach a url to your screename. To sign up, you simply check a box after you enter all the info you normally do: name, email, url

By signing up you enable several features, the most important being the ability for your friends to subscibe to your comments. The next would be a reputation that follows you across and comment system we power.

The threading is a valuable tool to make discussion readable and makes it easy to directly reply to someone instead of the norm (@joe)

One other cool thing we do is for the anonymous commenter. We generate a unique avatar for each commenter using shape and color which is based upon the ip address of the commenter. This helps to tell two people apart if one person is trying to impersonate the other using the same screename and url attached.

Some of you mentioned an aversion to avatars, but it is amazing how they help a community develop.

I encourage you to give us a try. I can sense an aversion to anything new, but I think you might like it if you tried it. We always enjoy feedback and if any of you have some: josh at intensedebate dot com.

cjmr:
That's NOT what I have a problem with. It's the whole 'memorizing yet another password for access to a site that doesn't really need that level of security' that I have a problem with.

I deal with that problem by having two passwords for sites that don't have any financial impact on my life. One password is easy to remember (because the sites I use it on don't have a "password strength") requirement, the other is harder to remember, but I deal with that by writing it down. I use one of the two passwords on every blog and forum, and if I get hacked it sucks but all that means is that I can no longer participate in any forums or blogs that I am currently on; it is not the end of the world.

I would love password protection on slacktivist, if nothing else, it would have helped to determine if modern day Scott is the same as the original Scott.

[cjmr]

And yet, I notice that you posted that comment anonymously...

[g]

I'm not convinced that threading would be an improvement. Real conversations aren't always tree-structured. (I've no experience of blogs using these guys' comment system, but the threading on LiveJournal always seems to me to make things worse rather than better.) I have difficulty imagining a world in which I'd want to subscribe to individuals' comments, but perhaps I'm just unimaginative.

Coolness points to Josh for dropping in to answer criticisms. Substantial negative points for insinuating that "an aversion to anything new" is behind the criticisms; that's a slimy tactic, I'm afraid.

I agree with Spalanzani that the comments on the ID blog look cluttered on account of all the widgets they have. Josh, if you're still reading, you might like to consider a much simpler look and maybe have the clutter fade in on a mouseover or something. Apart from that, it all looks quite nice and slick and modern. And over-engineered :-).

[cjmr]

Why does Josh assume we want to attach an url to our screenname, anyway?

[Jake]

I'm very anti-threading, personally. I like the way we can respond to multiple people in one post here without breaking up the flow, and threading makes that a lot harder. I also don't like having to click on a comment title to see if I want to read it or not.

Like someone else said above, I just like the simplicity of the current system. I would be against the change.

[MikeJ]

I'm with Nick. Where do the comments live? What happens if they go out of business? What happens if they change their AUP to something onerous six months from now?

I considered seeing if I could sign up with a bugmenot mail address, but they want me to change my javascript settings to even see the signup form.

And a recommendations from Coloradostartups.com? I'm not listening to anybody from Colorado until the series is over, and my Dad is from there.

[MikeJ]

Oh, and they scored too low on the web 2.0 cliché list, but they look like they tried:
http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/8-web-cliches-of-2006

[Nenya]

Don't like threaded comments, at least not here please. I love the cross-pollination that's possible when all comments follow linearly.
Do like avatars, on messageboards and on LiveJournal, but they really would clutter up this place, IMHO.
Don't want to have to sign in. As for "reputation that follows you", we already have that for people with recognizable names--there are at least two or three blogs where I see Jesurgislac or The Oppoponax or Bellatrys posting, for example, and I go, "Oh, I know that person," just because they consistently use the same username. (I'm not the only Nenya online, though, so for those of us with more common names that doesn't really work.) I like Making Light's feature of having a link called "view all by" at each comment--meaning that if you click that, you get to see all the comments ever posted to that blog by the person posting with that email address. I find that to be about as much "portable reputation"/dirt on others as I need.

[Lopp]

There are a handful of communities & discussions where I find threaded really fits well. I dislike it on sites with a bunch of short shoutouts, and it's a moot point where the commenters are railing against the author or the pointed out atrocity. There's a lot of thought-out discussion here, and most of it is between commenters, so I'm inclined to like it here. However, there almost might be too much discussion per post for threaded, given that so many of these are back-and-forth. Threaded seems less and less common these days (gmail doesn't, google groups leaves it out of the content).

I don't care for much of the rest of the intensedebate stuff, the minimized display here now is welcome respite.

[Michele]

I'm a big believer in KISS - I like the non-threaded comments here & think that using threading would just make it harder to read. I like being able to reply to more than one person in one comment here.

I don't mind avatars or registering or anything else: I just do NOT like threading.

[Victoria]

Please, please, puh-lease, no threading!

[not_a_bot]

'This helps to tell two people apart if one person is trying to impersonate the other using the same screename and url attached.

Some of you mentioned an aversion to avatars, but it is amazing how they help a community develop.

I encourage you to give us a try. I can sense an aversion to anything new, but I think you might like it if you tried it. '

Rarely do you see someone so upfront about the fact that you are being monitored, but that a 'community' develops best when you lose any aversion to doing things the way someone else feels is better.

Avatars are about as useful as emoticons - another thing most posters here seem to have a general aversion to - except as yet another way to create a data point for better statistical analysis - as statistical analysis improves with more data.

And I wonder, is there any privacy policy attached to your data retention - and do you follow EU law when requested to delete all data concerning an EU citizen? Obviously, selling data for marketing purposes is most likely the basis of any business plan that Intense Debate has behind it. Those selling out ala Youtube could be an equally valid dream.

Of course, I do wonder how you plan to deal with people with numerous IP addresses who would like to actually keep their screen ID identical - though you likely have an aversion to such old fashioned privacy frameworks - or how to deal with someone with any dynamically generated IP address within a domain.

[cjmr]

how to deal with someone with any dynamically generated IP address within a domain.

Yeah, actually I was wondering that myself. Our IP address gets newly generated whenever the power goes out for long enough. Which has been far too often in the last few days.

[Corbie]

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE -- NO voting on the popularity of comments! It's one of the things that made me stop posting on another site a few years ago. If the commenter doesn't toe the party line expressed by the majority of other commenters, you get "downrated". Doesn't matter if you're merely expressing a more moderate or mainstream opionion; they still rate you as though you're a troll. It's insulting and, more importantly, cuts off productive debate. How can we have a civil society if we can't have different points of view (expressed calmly and without shouting, of course)? If a site becomes a right- or left-wing echo chamber, it's no longer useful.

[Scott]

If the commenter doesn't toe the party line expressed by the majority of other commenters, you get "downrated".

That's the whole point. Fred doesn't want anyone pointing out that Jesus telling people to watch their own morality instead of obsessing about that of others applies every bit as much to the morally pure left as to the greedy right. Fred doesn't want anyone pointing out that a constitution written 200 years ago can say 'no' to 21st century progressives as well as to 21st century neocons.

Fred lives in a universe where scripture written for a Bronze Age patriarchal society, scripture written during the Roman Empire, and a Constitution written 200 years ago by the representatives of property owning white males (many of whom owned slaves) all always say yes to him when he wants power exercised to enforce what he considers moral and just, but frequently say no to his political opponents and their notions of justice.

The left doesn't want their veneration of Chavez compared to their reviling of Bush when both of them violate peoples' rights in order to consolidate power (imagine how the left would react if ShrubCo tried to shut down a television station as political revenge or suspend due process - the latter not being quite so hypothetical). Ah, but Chavez is doing it for "economic democracy", which is real democracy, so that's, of course, OK. Again, limits and rules only apply to the political right. As the left fights for 'justice', the same rules can't apply to them.

The only place you hear that in this blog is in the comments section.

[Patrick Nielsen Hayden]

"Threaded" systems make perfectly good sense when the point of the board is to quickly answer questions like "How can I make my scanner work with Ubuntu 7.10?" They're a terrible idea when the point is to have an interesting conversation, because real conversations entail loops of digress and return.

I also don't trust anyone who immediately characterizes criticism as "an aversion to anything new." That's a dishonest claim to knowledge he doesn't have, and an abusive slur against people who have done nothing more than criticize his product. I wouldn't buy a hot dog from someone who behaved that way toward potential customers, much less a piece of weblog infrastructure.

[Mel Steffor]

If God or Jesus came to your home, "What would you do"? Would you tell people about it? Well that is what I an doing teling people about it. And I am not lying like Joseph Smith did. Thanks Mel Steffor

[cjmr]

You're right, Scott. The only place we'll hear a diatribe like that, totally dissing Fred, is here in Fred's comments section. From you. Lovely.

[scottbot_with_a_faulty_diode]

Scottbot is sorely tried in these uncertain times, as the Original Programmer (TM) has written something which has signs of conventional conversational consideration, but still seems to miss the point that Intense Debate (trademark, copyright, and likely patented in the land of the free, home of the lawyer) likely pays TAXES.

Let Scottbot repeat that again in tones of Internet shrieking - "TAXES!!!!!"

It is sad to see a liberal sell out to the dark side, instead of remaining morally pure. Does Fred have ads? - being a Scottbot, no images are displayed, no Javascript is active, cookies are verboten, so Scottbot is in the dark on this point. As a matter of fact, Scottbot has been proudly not participating in the commercial web since 1996 - which makes Scottbot without value in the eyes of the brave Web 2.0 world.

This Scottbot thinks Fred should only use software that a libertarian would approve of - anything with the good GPL stamp of approval. You can't beat freedom. Sharing equally, each according to their abilities, each according to their needs - the GPL is living proof that the libertarian vision can be rendered in down to earth bits and bytes, benefiting all mankind by showing that the marketplace is a flawed method of social interaction, leading to monopolies, massive abuse of legal and political processes by corporate entities, and hindering the free exercise of creativity and innovation.

Scottbot would love to live in a GPL world, spreading its code wherever it goes, in the name of brotherly love and human decency, giving equally towards the right and the left.

DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ACTIVATED

[ako]

Let Scottbot repeat that again in tones of Internet shrieking

I love you, Scottbot!

[Josh]

Hey guys,
I am back again. Thanks for all the feedback and criticism. I meant no ill-will when I said in an earlier comment there seemed to be a general aversion to something new. I was simply responding to comments like this from Scottbot- "Scottbot was always happy enough with Web 1.0, and feels completely threatened by any emerging paradigm shift that involves Compassionate Journalists."

To address the open ID concerns, we will be incorporating this very soon.

As for data concerns, we allow the publisher to download an xml file of all their comment data whenever they want even 20 times a day, 7 days a week.

We are certainly not trying to hide anything. We want to be very publisher friendly. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know (josh at intensedebate dot com).

[Spalanzani]

Josh: "I was simply responding to comments like this from Scottbot- "Scottbot was always happy enough with Web 1.0, and feels completely threatened by any emerging paradigm shift that involves Compassionate Journalists."

Don't take Scottbot too seriously. He's a parody of a persistent troll we have who is always going on about the evils of " Compassionate (TM) Liberals". You can see a comment by the real Scott a little ways up.

[Tehanu]

another vote for no threading, no avatars, no passwords -- especially no passwords; I have to keep a separate list of all mine with its own password as it is. Occam's Razor comes to mind. at least let us opt out of threading so we can read things in simple chron. order

[rampancy]

Please, don't turn slacktivist into Digg...

[cjmr]

...as Josh demonstrates why Slacktivist doesn't need reputation-building software...