Loading Profile...
EMPLOYEE
We want comments about our new comments feature
We've changed our topic page to add new features. One new feature: comments. These are different from replies, and we envision them as shout-outs, short asides, etc. We love the idea of having people add this kind of detail to the conversation. It's fun, and we think it will be helpful. But, we need to make sure we are differentiating the comments feature from the reply feature.
We'd love your feedback about our new comments. Do they work? Do they need to be constrained? Do they add value? This may end up being a conversation for those who are intimate with the details of user interface design, but it's not intended to be. Let us know what you think.
And, if you're feeling especially creative: use the reply and comments features to to demonstrate your ideas.
We'd love your feedback about our new comments. Do they work? Do they need to be constrained? Do they add value? This may end up being a conversation for those who are intimate with the details of user interface design, but it's not intended to be. Let us know what you think.
And, if you're feeling especially creative: use the reply and comments features to to demonstrate your ideas.
Follow this discussion to get notifications on your dashboard.
-
Inappropriate?At a high level, I am personally more likely to toss off a quick comment to a respondent with the new comments style. I like that it preserves the main the reply thread direction around the original question, problem, idea. Side comments (which could be praise for a good/funny answer, non sequitors, jokes, etc) should be encouraged but confused with the push towards desired outcomes.
I’m happy
5 Comments
Add a comment
-
Word! -
Side comments are called asides. Use italics? Indent them to the right?
-
Aha! These comments are PUBLIC and in line where they belong. Applause!
-
a comment to a reply is a fobolus idea! btw i would like to know what is running behind getsatisfaction.com
-
it's ruby on rails, mysql 5, solr for search, plus lots of other code in ruby.
-
3 Comments Add a comment
-
Hear hear!
-
OK, but please make a link on EVERY topic to where the philosophy and operation of replies and comments are discussed as if in the user's manual. Transparency, yes.
-
Umm no. I know you're kidding but just on the off case that you are not: You aren't working under the same constraints as Twitter and using Twitter to do support would be really difficult.
-
Inappropriate?Another point about comments. When you leave a comment, only the person you're leaving it for will receive an email notification -- the others in the main topic thread will not. We are working to implement email notification for others who have interacted with the comment but were not the author of the original reply. Make sense? And in the meantime, from your dashboard you can see all comments left in a topic you've participated in.
I’m trying to illuminate but fear I may be confusing instead
2 Comments Add a comment
-
But wait, comments may have content, too. Please don't hide them. Indeed, why not include the entire reply and all comments in the email to all topic subscribers.
-
i like the option like it is on youtube. readers can vote for replies - so could for comments
-
Inappropriate?Personally, I'm having trouble adjusting to the new comment style since I'm so used to responding someone directly.
It would be great to have another method to respond directly to someone in the topic while not giving up the room to fully respond.
I like the idea of bundling kudos/demerits with the commenting system since it further directs the idea that these are short pieces of data similar to add emotions to a reply.1 Comment Add a comment
-
Ahh, I think you are requesting a PrivateComment to a reply. Why not use a click on the name to bring up a Private Comment labeled message form to do that?
-
Inappropriate?I'd like to have the option to be notified (by email) of all comments in a particular thread, whether or not the comment was made in response to a reply from me.
Since the comments are not time-stamped in any way, I can't easily tell that 4 out of the 22 comments on a very active thread are new to me (i.e., they were made since my last visit).
I find it easier to just page through a threaded Gmail conversation with all the comments listed in the order that they were written, than to scan the topic page here... hence my request for this option.
Edited to add:
If there was a way for me to easily switch back and forth from the Topic view (as it is right now) to a Chronological Topic view (where all the entries, whether they be comments or replies, are listed in chronological order by date&time posted), then I probably wouldn't be asking for this.
I’m happy with the comments feature but want to make sure I don't miss any.
1 Comment Add a comment
-
Right. See all comments. Time stamp comments. I'd rather let any reader wikify any topic so that the top part is the summary on the topic, revised continually.
-
Inappropriate?Yes, great point, and we are working on making e-mail notification for comments an option that is more straightforward. Turn on/off all comments, just ones sent to you, etc. Options. That's what we think we need here.
We're also thinking of making comments be more like asides -- constrained to be short text-only responses. I personally love the emotion aspect of these kinds of asides, and I think we'll have a different take on this next week at some point. We're still discussing it, but I am a big fan of making these comments shout-outs, asides, and fun ways to quickly make a point: love your point, hate your point, not sure what you mean.
I never, ever say this, but.... stay tuned. And, please keep the comments about comments coming!
I’m into emotion
4 Comments Add a comment
-
I like the idea of calling them asides, instead of comments.
-
Well, you've got a friend in me. I like that language, too, but we were wondering if it's a word that most people would understand. It's one of them Shakespeare words.
-
Eric, you have just demonstrated another problem. Too easy to duplicate comments by mistake. Why limit the author's edit/delete time? That seems silly here.
-
Boy, do I hate those duplicates, but they happen to replies, too. So, it doesn't seem to be specific to comments. Also, we try to be as transparent as possible, so we limit editing for comments, just like for replies and topics. Plus, it feels consistent.
-
Inappropriate?I like the idea of comments, but they're easy to overlook when reading a thread. I overlooked one several times when actually looking for responses in a thread. I think they should stand out a bit more than they do currently.
The gray on white action makes them disappear. It's pretty, but invisible. Keep the pretty, lose the invisible.
I’m hungry
2 Comments Add a comment
-
Oh yes, please. My eyes are getting mature and high contrast is valuable to me.
-
good point nitpicker. I don't know if we every though about people who have problems with low contrasts.
-
Inappropriate?Yeah -- good point, Brad. The challenge is making them noticeable enough while differentiating them from replies.
I’m sure we'll strike the right balance eventually
2 Comments Add a comment
-
But Amy, that should be a comment, it's not a reply to the topic in general. Let's discuss the GOALS of having both replies and comments in detail. (I am a
-
Hmmm... interesting point. I guess if I feel like I'm contributing to the conversation as whole -- like maybe the other people in the room might want to hear it -- I add it as a reply, but if I'm really just saying something of value only to that user I use the comment feature. Perhaps this is not the right way to think of it? Even *I'm* still getting used to this new comment system. :)
-
Inappropriate?I don't know if this is doable (or how it impacts usability) but I'd love it if there was some way for me to easily see new comments and replies on the Topic page. By "new" I mean they were posted since the last time I viewed the page.
I don't have any particular preference as to how new items can be identified (highlighting? different background color? a special icon?) as long as it's consistently applied.7 Comments Add a comment
-
That's quite clever. If the timestamps are kept, and the timestamps for each subscriber to a topic are kept, it would be easy to highlight new stuff for you.
-
Subscribers to a topic get email re new replies. My ideal would send them the original topic entry and all of every new or newly commented reply. It's easy to do.
-
It's not very easy to do at all nitpicker. Keeping track of what everyone has seen on the site is a google-scale problem to solve; We're talking tons and tons of data, and lots of tricks to make it performant. We'll get there eventually, but we need to grow before we have the resources to achieve that.
-
You have a problem with that? Contact me or BZWebTech.com for an affordable, no cure, no pay contract to fix that within a month. Disks are cheap and the problem is not so big. I guarantee it.
-
Nope, I don't have a problem with it. In fact I worked on some prototypes for it around october last year. It's not so much that disk space costs, it's about writing, querying, processing all that data at scale. It wouldn't be a big deal, I agree if we are only talking about just in emails messages, but tracking (and properly displaying) what content you've seen on a topic page would be the most expensive part of serving a page by a long shot. Most things on a topic page we can share between users, but this would add an entirely new level of personalization. We'll most likely be dealing w/ this problem if/when we build out the ability to ignore someone, and so it will probably get much more within our grasp then.
-
I suppose I should clarify, I'm talking about tracking "seen content" in the manner that google reader considers it. That means we have to track seen/unseen status per-reply, rather than as a single timestamp per-topic per-person. I was basing my comment off of the work i did before rather than what mdy suggested. I'm sorry about that. The single timestamp method is not hard, I agree, but I think that, while better than the current state of things, is inferior to the more granular approach. Thanks for your input nitpicker!
-
Scott, I don't know the details of what Google Reader does, though I know it doesn't work well for me. Still, don't let perfection be the enemy of better (and doable).
-
Inappropriate?Hmmm... Interesting idea. Definitely would require some customized personalization functionality but I know we'd like to do more of that anyway at some point.1 Comment Add a comment
-
Should be a comment. Good content. See reply below. Replies offer better formatting. Where is the manual that distinguishes comments from replies???
-
Inappropriate?We should learn from the success of Wikipedia and create topic articles (at the top of each topic) to summarize and continually refine the best understanding of the topic. The original question/problem/whatever with its replies and comments constitutes the Talk page for the topic article.
The largely time sequenced replies and comments just make the topic LONGER. The gems of value get buried. The article at the top can get BETTER over time. That's a tremendous advantage.
Treat the article as in a wiki so damage can be reverted and attribution for changes is hidden in the history. You can make the history a third part of the topic at the bottom if you like.
The forum style replies and comments should, I feel, remain subject to deletion and revision by only their authors, but not for a mere 15 minutes, forever. History? I don't know. We don't even have access to the goals for the whole Get Satisafaction process. Let's have explicit goals and an actual user's manual highly visible (by link) at the top of every single topic. Links don't take much room.
This is a major comment and suggests to me that, again like wikis, it should be made easy to fork off another topic from any existing topic, leaving a link to the new topic at the location of the reply or comment which fostered it. This is a more complex system than we have now, but visualize how much richer and easier to understand things could become if this were done. It could make GS into a truly remarkable and compelling resource for participating companies and their customers.
If the idea intrigues but seems too complicated for you to accomplish on your own, I can help you find experts who can accomplish this from scratch in a matter of months, and not so many, either. Private comments can be sent to dick at cfcl dot com, but to get past my spam filters, please include Nitpicker in the subject line
I’m excited to cosider such improvements
1 Comment Add a comment
-
Hi Nipticker. Thanks so much for your thoughts. I am constantly struggling with feeling frustrated that the "help" topics we create aren't more obvious to people in the course of general site use. We have talked about an idea similar to what you suggest here but I'm not sure where we're at with it. You have inspired me to put the fire under it again, though. We will definitely be discussing your ideas this week. Also, fyi, we do have topic forking in the works you will be happy to know! Thanks for the offer of help, though.
EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE