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10.2.7
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10.2.6
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New Wowhead Feature Preview: Comment Revamp
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Post by
baradiel
xD
Post by
Ashelia
•Upvoting now requires 125 reputation and downvoting requires 250 reputation. Before, both required 150.
Thanks!
•Moderators can now make a comment "STICKY" which makes it appear on top and colors it green.
Thats alot of work for you guys :(
I'd imagine that it's the same as reporting a topic for sticky. You send a report off, saying you want this comment to be a sticky, the mods take a look at it, and if it's a good comment, they sticky it.
Not at all. It's just so I can sticky comments I like--literally. I wanted the feature so I could highlight comments that shouldn't be at the bottom (i.e. people who write awesome mini guides in the comments a year after an event comes out but never get seen).
Post by
508201
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
JakkFrost
Ok, I'm liking the new look and feel. Just one suggestion so far, and that's to make make the divider line between comment and reply a tiny bit more visible. Again, that's just a suggestion, and obviously based on personal preference, so take it as such. I also like the ability to undo your rating in case you change your mind or accidentally click the wrong arrow.
On the rating issue, perhaps one thing to do is implement a 15- or 30-second cooldown on being able to rate posts. This would discourage people just picking a page to spam ratedowns on for ach points, and give people time to absorb the post they're reading rather than just rating it down on a knee-jerk reaction.
Post by
Nulgar
Quick thought, though it's only closely related: I'd like to be able to see my comments back to the oldest ones, which are probably rather rubbish, or at least most likely outdated, so that I can review them (update or delete)
Post by
baradiel
and its gunna be like the link? we r not gunna have our games or WoW Generals? or BBCodes?
Post by
K21Nova
Still no option to permanently delete your own comments? I think that should be added. Perhaps it should require a certain amount of reputation, perhaps not. Also, you could restrict it so that if a comment is above certain points, you can't just delete it like that.
I have several comments which I need deleted, and I don't want to report that many to moderators, when I could just do it myself. I mean permanently deleted.
Any chance of getting this kind of an option?
Post by
rahael
if we see replies (especially older ones) that make more sense as comments, will there be a functionality to get them moved while preserving their rating?
Post by
Bozanimal
The comments take up too much horizontal real estate, in my opinion, and would be better aligned on the right side of the page when it will usually not interfere with the comments due to the standard WoWHead non-justified left-aligned comment text.
I like that I can edit my comment rather than committing to a positive or negative vote. I have rarely rated a comment incorrectly, but when it happens the option to change is welcomed.
I do not like the suggestion to leave a comment on how to improve the comment after voting something down. Quite often I am down-voting because a comment is redundant. Leaving a response would only add additional clutter. I believe the goal would be to keep comments relevant, on-topic, and either useful or entertaining. Comments about comments only rarely fall into that category. (Appropriate example).
I prefer the current reply format. For one I can link directly to a response comment like this, which I cannot do with a reply. Replies in the comments should not be like a forum dialogue, because they are not, they're persistent comments regarding the item, instance, or other object for the page. Answers to questions or user discourse are better suited to the forums, since that is what they are designed for.
I hope this has been useful.
Happy gaming,
Boz
Post by
Koper
Changes
Chrome Users: you have to spam CTRL-F5 a few times to see the changes.
Just pushed live on
http://test.wowhead.com/
a few fixes/changes:
Fixed a bug where the "STICKY" badge didn't appear on Chrome
Filter by Patch now works again
The colors for the comment reply ratings have been changed from red to green
The rating reply text will no longer overlay with the reply text if it has more than 2 characters. Additionally, replies that contain a long list of characters without spaces will no longer break the layout of the page.
\, \, etc now work correctly in replies
Minor design/styling changes and improvements
Regarding the "hide replies" option: I'm not 100% against it, but in my opinion it's really not necessary. The comments are hidden to avoid you having to scroll a lot, but if you expand them you have to scroll anyways and you're already past them, so why would you want to hide them again?
Replies to feedback
On the rating issue, perhaps one thing to do is implement a 15- or 30-second cooldown on being able to rate posts. This would discourage people just picking a page to spam ratedowns on for ach points, and give people time to absorb the post they're reading rather than just rating it down on a knee-jerk reaction.
This is a feature of the voting abuse detector script, which is in the works and will be ready soon. It runs every day at midnight and cancels all abusive votes (including the ones that were cast too fast, for example 1 second from each other). It also emails the users warning them about this, and if it happens again within 1 month it will warn the moderators so that they can take action.
Quick thought, though it's only closely related: I'd like to be able to see my comments back to the oldest ones, which are probably rather rubbish, or at least most likely outdated, so that I can review them (update or delete)
You can choose "Sort by date" on a page per page basis.
if we see replies (especially older ones) that make more sense as comments, will there be a functionality to get them moved while preserving their rating?
Not currently, but I do want to implement it in the future, especially if after launch we have use for it often.
The comments take up too much horizontal real estate, in my opinion
What do you mean? They take less horizontal space than they do currently because of the new vote controls. In any case, horizontal space would go unused otherwise.
I do not like the suggestion to leave a comment on how to improve the comment after voting something down.
First of all it's just a suggestion -- you don't have to leave a reply if you don't want to. For now we'll be always displaying it (since it's a new feature) but I understand it will get annoying, so in the future it's likely we will display it only X times to new users after which it stops appearing.
Leaving a response would only add additional clutter.
With the new reply system, leaving a response on how to improve the comment adds minimal amount of clutter (1 line of vertical space taken, instead of 20+ it used to) and is encouraged. We may also be adding notifications for the OP when someone replies to the comment.
For one I can link directly to a response comment like this, which I cannot do with a reply.
This is a good point - it's possible we will add a way to link directly replies.
Replies in the comments should not be like a forum dialogue, because they are not, they're persistent comments regarding the item, instance, or other object for the page. Answers to questions or user discourse are better suited to the forums, since that is what they are designed for.
In the new system
comments
are supposed to be persistent comments regarding the item while
replies
are supposed to discuss the comment itself, offering suggestions, corrections, etc. In the old system the role of the "reply" was not very well defined.
I think with this new system the replies will do a good job of handling discussion about the comment itself. You mention that the discussions intended for the new reply system should be on the forums instead, but 1% of our users use the forums and creating a new thread to discuss a single comment of a single page seems a bit silly.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##Koper##DELIM##
Post by
rahael
if we see replies (especially older ones) that make more sense as comments, will there be a functionality to get them moved while preserving their rating?
Not currently, but I do want to implement it in the future, especially if after launch we have use for it often.
if we do see a reply like this, do you guys recommend that we submit a mod report for it or just ignore it and wait for a future update? i know there is a 'detach' option that you can use on your own posts, but without PMs there is not really a way to tell a user that their reply is more appropriate as a comment.
btw, since i forgot to say it in my earlier post, thanks so much for your hard work on this! i think it will make finding useful information on comment pages much easier.
Post by
Bozanimal
Note that I am currently browsing Wowhead on Firefox 8.0 in Windows XP in windowed mode on a 1280 x 800 screen. I neglected to include this originally.
The comments take up too much horizontal real estate, in my opinion
What do you mean? They take less horizontal space than they do currently because of the new vote controls. In any case, horizontal space would go unused otherwise.
This is my fault, I did not explain myself as clearly as I would have liked. The up and down arrows on the left occupy more page width than the current voting system because they now appear on the same line as out of date/report/reply. Now they basically create a new vertical column in the comment table, thereby taking up more horizontal real estate. Putting the voting buttons on the left of the column pushes the entire comment over to the right.
In general, the new, prettier buttons occupy more visual space than the current system. Users browsing in lower resolutions - netbook, pad, and portable device users - may not like that the new buttons occupy more space. I'll have to take a look the next time I'm on my portable.
That said, I like the new buttons, I would just have them occupy a
right
justified column rather than the left. In addition to the pagination rationale I mentioned, users read left to right anyway, meaning you read the comment and move right to the voting buttons. Having them at the left is - to me - more awkward than the current location. Not a big deal in the grand scheme.
I do not like the suggestion to leave a comment on how to improve the comment after voting something down.
First of all it's just a suggestion -- you don't have to leave a reply if you don't want to. For now we'll be always displaying it (since it's a new feature) but I understand it will get annoying, so in the future it's likely we will display it only X times to new users after which it stops appearing.There is no need to get defensive (indicated by, "First of all..."). There was a request for feedback, so I'm providing input in the hopes that you find it useful. It may be that I am a minority voice, and that's fine, too. Wowhead is an excellent site and I'm sure that whatever is made live is going to be great.
On topic, the reminder was annoying for me for a couple reasons:
Voting down short comments - one line comments - the reminder popup covers the up-vote button of the comment below it (so that you could not click it).
The reminder is condescending. As a long-time user I don't need a comment nanny. That said, maybe it could be turned off for users over a certain Reputation Point threshold, as they should know by a certain point when a comment does and does not warrant a response.
Leaving a response would only add additional clutter.
With the new reply system, leaving a response on how to improve the comment adds minimal amount of clutter (1 line of vertical space taken, instead of 20+ it used to) and is encouraged. We may also be adding notifications for the OP when someone replies to the comment.This is a good point, the new response system is a lot neater; suggestion withdrawn.
Replies in the comments should not be like a forum dialogue, because they are not, they're persistent comments regarding the item, instance, or other object for the page. Answers to questions or user discourse are better suited to the forums, since that is what they are designed for.
In the new system
comments
are supposed to be persistent comments regarding the item while
replies
are supposed to discuss the comment itself, offering suggestions, corrections, etc. In the old system the role of the "reply" was not very well defined.
I think with this new system the replies will do a good job of handling discussion about the comment itself. You mention that the discussions intended for the new reply system should be on the forums instead, but 1% of our users use the forums and creating a new thread to discuss a single comment of a single page seems a bit silly.This is another case where I didn't explain myself well, though your response makes perfect sense. In this case I was thinking of comments like this, where folks are asking questions that are short-term and more appropriate to the forums. The new system will be less cluttered, but I still envision conversations like the old Thottbot (shudder).
Additionally, looking at that same comment on live versus on the test site it looks like the conversation did not carry over from live to the test site as it would if it were created in the test environment. What I mean is that my initial comment, the response from Forcefedglas, and my subsequent reply to Forcefedglas on the Test site are not organized as replies as they are on live or as they would be if they were created within the test site.
I hope this last comment makes sense, because it could impact a lot of existing comment formatting if you transition the site to the new system. As it looks now it appears that existing replies are stripped and moved into their own new comment windows, making it tough to see that a comment was aimed at a prior commenter or that it might be part of a conversation. If you would like me to explain further let me know.
I hope this is helpful, and keep up the good work!
Happy gaming,
Boz
Post by
Koper
There is no need to get defensive (indicated by, "First of all..."). There was a request for feedback, so I'm providing input in the hopes that you find it useful. It may be that I am a minority voice, and that's fine, too. Wowhead is an excellent site and I'm sure that whatever is made live is going to be great.
I didn't mean to come off this way. I simply wanted to make absolutely clear that every user has the right to upvote or downvote any comment for any reason, without having to disclose said reason.
In any case 1 week or so from now the invite to leave a reply will be removed for non-new users. If I forget to do that feel free to post a new thread in the feedback forum asking for it to be done.
This is another case where I didn't explain myself well, though your response makes perfect sense. In this case I was thinking of comments like this, where folks are asking questions that are short-term and more appropriate to the forums. The new system will be less cluttered, but I still envision conversations like the old Thottbot (shudder).
Remember that only up to 5 replies are shown by default, so (barring exceptional cases where all replies use the maximum amount of characters) the space they take up is always small.
Additionally, looking at that same comment on live versus on the test site it looks like the conversation did not carry over from live to the test site as it would if it were created in the test environment. What I mean is that my initial comment, the response from Forcefedglas, and my subsequent reply to Forcefedglas on the Test site are not organized as replies as they are on live or as they would be if they were created within the test site.
This is a very valid concern. The old replies are converted to the new replies if they are short enough, and to standalone comments if they are too long (like the example you linked).
In some cases old replies are too long to be converted but can't stand on their own. Fortunately this happens somewhat rarely, but I don't see a solution for it, except dealing with it manually by reporting them (or voting to delete, if they have no value and shouldn't be "saved").
It kinda sucks but I don't see alternatives.
Post by
Monday
So wait, will any reputation vanish if comments are moved into replies?
Post by
Koper
So wait, will any reputation vanish if comments are moved into replies?
Not for the moment being; we haven't decided what to do. We may remove it in the future (it's something we're technically capable of doing) but we haven't even discussed that at all.
If you want to know my personal opinion, I would leave it be until a reason to do otherwise (a revamp of the reputation system, or similar) comes up.
Post by
gamerunknown
I really don't like the new reply system. The old system was more forum based, but it's not like wowhead users are establishing some kind of incontrovertable truth. Even in matters of theorycrafting there is usually room for individual variation based on proximity to server and weighting for response time (since some people have slower response times). Most comments aren't even mathematical in nature and may just be aggregates of data revolving around a certain point, which cluster around one topic but stand alone too. Having them be responses to an original point is the best compromise IMO: the "if it aint broke" approach. Though perhaps wowhead wants to lead on this point...
I think a good example of variations of a theme would be here:
A Zombie's Guide to Proper Nutrition
.
Perhaps a more reasonable approach would be an optional hidden whisper system for downvoting comments, as well as a notification system for when a comment or thread is replied to (perhaps popping up on reputation but awarding 0 points).
Post by
534648
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
baradiel
Btw, are we gunna get 1+ rep point each time we comment? but we start with 0 on the comment...
Post by
Thortok2000
I took a look.
Overall, like the system. I particularly like the reply system and limitations.
1 - After clicking a rating to get +/- counts there's no way to return to the original number without reloading the page.
2 - I miss the green text. -.- It was actually easier to read. And white bold words stand out a lot more in green text than they do in a mass of other white words. It was also a goal to aim for - if my text turned green it was an accomplishment =D
I see that comments with negative rating have red backgrounds. Some kind of background for high rated comments would be pretty. And awesome. Or just go back to the green text again. As it is, the only visual distinguishing features between high rated comments and low rated ones is a single number. And the number itself is grey and doesn't stand out. And even the number is the same color as lower-rated comments. Replies have color-coded rating numbers, and comments don't?
3 - Because a reply is a reply, it magically makes it awesome and wonderful and there can never ever ever be any form of bad reply ever? I mean, why unable to downrate replies?
I read this thread where you've answered this question a couple times. Less screen real estate, and your biggest point, if there's more than 5 replies than the bad reply won't even show unless expanded.
While that's true, it doesn't answer the question of a page that isn't looked at very often, with a high rated comment, and someone replies to it with a bad reply. This nice, pretty comment with great info now has this ugly wart attached to it that it can't get rid of. Can't down vote, can't delete. And if you accidentally click to up vote it, you can't cancel your upvote either. =(
You make points of why you don't need to be able to downrate replies. You don't answer the question of why you need to NOT be able to downrate or vote-to-delete replies. What exactly does it harm by having this functionality (other than the coding effort to put it in)?
4 - One of the reasons people would post replies to the original dated comment on a page is because they have new info to add to the discussion. As it currently stands, new comments slide in just above the deleted comments, way down on the page.
Some kind of way to emphasize new comments towards the top of the page would be good. Basically, track how many times that page has been viewed since the comment was posted.
And then use a formula like (# of comments on the page) - (# of views since this particular comment was posted) - (# of ratings, positive or negative, the comment has received so far) = 'newness factor.' If ('newness factor' > 0) then ('newness factor' + rating) = effective rating. Else, rating = effective rating.
Then sort the page by 'effective rating'. Then slightly to the left of the rating number, put a small little 'new!' icon until 'newness factor' = 0 or less. This will encourage people to rate the comment, either up or down.
So you might see like:
new! 1 - A comment that was just posted and you're the first person to see it
25 - really awesome comment
new! 6 - new comment without a lot of ratings yet but it's been viewed a few times
16 - old comment that's kinda good
4 - A very old comment that nobody really liked and very few people even bother to rate since it's low on the page anyway
-1 - An old deleted comment
new! -7 - A comment that was annoying/spam that a lot of people downrated right away but it was only just posted yesterday
So the way it would effectively work is like this:
A - New comments that don't get rated at all will slowly travel down the page until the new wears off. The more comments a page has, the more views required to make it travel down the page.
B - Comments that get rated down, go down faster. The more down votes, the faster it goes down.
C - Comments that get rated up, go down slower. The more up votes, the slower it goes down (and it might even stop going down if it gets a lot of up votes.) They still go down though until the new wears off, then any up votes after that cause it to go up again. The goal is for it to not get lower on the page than its 'final rating' that it will get after lots of people see the comment.
~~~
Other possibilities:
A - List the last X number of comments posted at the top as new comments.
B - List any comment with less than X ratings (positive or negative) at the top.
C - List any comments posted in the last X days/weeks/etc at the top.
These are simpler solutions and not as dynamic as the one I came up with first. =P There's also pros and cons to each. Here's the reasons why I didn't offer them as my main suggestion:
A - There will always be comments placed above high-rated comments simply because they're the newest, even if the last time anyone posted a comment was three years ago.
B - Especially on very popular pages, there can sometimes be hundreds of comments. Forcing people to rate them all to get them out of the way of high rated comments would be tedious.
C - For less popular pages, new comment time-frame would expire before anyone ever saw the new comment, defeating the point of even emphasizing new comments in the first place.
Anyway, I'm just some ideas, you may have your own idea. Or you may feel like having new comments be visible is just not important. But I feel it is, especially on pages with a very large number of comments.
5 - Now that replies are so closely tied to comments, sort of like a mini thread, a way to be notified if someone replies to your comment (or to a comment you've replied to) would be cool. Perhaps an 'unviewed replies' on your profile page or something.
6 - Limit comments to one per person per page. But keep replies unlimited. Also increase the character limit for comments (possibly make this based on rep).
7 - Regarding excessive voting, perhaps limiting users to X amounts of votes per day/week/month/whatever (where X increases with rep) would be a good start. If you don't do that already, I thought you did. I don't know the full details of the rep system since when it came out I was instantly at max rep anyway. =P
Let's say that at the first stage of rep you get 10 votes a week, then the next stage you get 50, then 100. Nobody should need more than 100 votes a week unless they're a mod or something, but you can set the limits how you like.
But for each limit, if within a given week, someone uses 50% of their limit on only negative votes, it should pop up with a warning. "You have 3 votes remaining in this week, and you've already voted negative 5 times. Perhaps you should find comments you like and vote them up?"
If someone ignores this warning, they'll find that there's a hard cap of 75% of their voting allotment allowed to go to negative votes.
An alternate suggestion is to simply block a user from rating any comments negative whenever they go over the 3:1 ratio of negative:positive. They get an error message indicating they need to rate X amount of comments positive before they can rate any more comments negative, where X is the amount of comments necessary to get 25% positive votes. This limitation goes away when the 'vote to delete' function is unlocked through rep.
8 - Definitely disable the reminder to explain why you downvote for those with rep.
Post by
Koper
We're launching the system soon today, so the test website was shut down and I will close this thread (but your feedback is always welcome; you can open new threads for feature suggestions and improvements regarding the comment revamp).
We feel that the new feature is "good enough" as it is now, and we prefer to implement the bigger improvements (such as a notification system, etc) over time instead of doing one single huge change. This will allow us do have less bugs and to better evaluate user feedback as it comes up over time.
1 - After clicking a rating to get +/- counts there's no way to return to the original number without reloading the page.
That's true, but why would you want to do that? It's basically the same thing I said about hiding replies again.. I'm not against it per-se, but I don't see it as a useful feature.
I miss the green text. -.- It was actually easier to read. And white bold words stand out a lot more in green text than they do in a mass of other white words. It was also a goal to aim for - if my text turned green it was an accomplishment =D
I kinda miss it too to be honest, but it didn't make much sense to have a block of green comments followed by a block of white comments.
I see that comments with negative rating have red backgrounds.
Those are deleted comments.
Some kind of background for high rated comments would be pretty. And awesome.
I will ask our designer if she can come up with something but, honestly, I think it will look silly for the reason described above.
Because a reply is a reply, it magically makes it awesome and wonderful and there can never ever ever be any form of bad reply ever? I mean, why unable to downrate replies?
I see that a lot of users want this.. Maybe make a new thread in the feedback forum asking for it, so people can reply, and if it seems to be very wanted we can implement it.
Some kind of way to emphasize new comments towards the top of the page would be good. Basically, track how many times that page has been viewed since the comment was posted.
Yeah, I thought about that.. Even about something very similar to your "formula". But I think it will be too confusing for users, and they won't understand on what basis the comments are ordered.
We could put a "NEW" badge for comments that have never been voted on (as you suggested), but I don't know how effective it will be without changing the sorting. It's something we have to give some thought about.
Now that replies are so closely tied to comments, sort of like a mini thread, a way to be notified if someone replies to your comment (or to a comment you've replied to) would be cool. Perhaps an 'unviewed replies' on your profile page or something.
This is definitely planned, along with a system that notifies you when someone quotes you on the forums among other things. However it will not be ready short term, it's more of a long term project.
Regarding excessive voting, perhaps limiting users to X amounts of votes per day/week/month/whatever (where X increases with rep) would be a good start. If you don't do that already, I thought you did. I don't know the full details of the rep system since when it came out I was instantly at max rep anyway. =P
This is already done.
http://www.wowhead.com/privilege=9
But for each limit, if within a given week, someone uses 50% of their limit on only negative votes, it should pop up with a warning. "You have 3 votes remaining in this week, and you've already voted negative 5 times. Perhaps you should find comments you like and vote them up?"
If someone ignores this warning, they'll find that there's a hard cap of 75% of their voting allotment allowed to go to negative votes.
I'm against controlling how people vote as long as they read the comments and focus on the comment's contents rather than its author. We'll see how well the abusive votes detection script works and then evaluate if further measures are needed.
8 - Definitely disable the reminder to explain why you downvote for those with rep.
This will be done after a few days from launch, so that everyone (high or low rep) has a chance to be reminded that it's nice to explain why a downvote was made.
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