Comments

[Ross]

We've been discussing adding the ability to comment on our news stories/reviews/articles, and wanted to know if that would be of interest to you all?

More and more I find myself reading the comments about a story for far longer than I spend on the item itself, so wondered if we weren't missing a trick by not having this feature here.

Any opinions would be most welcome : )

[Martin]

I'd say that's an excellent idea. The only concern I'd have is that of policing spammers/bots or mere idiots posting one line of drivel. Unless you put a spam filter or captca-style function in the admins and moderators might end up having to trawl through the threads to weed it out.

Assuming that doesn't pose too much of a problem it ought to be really beneficial for visitors. I'd certainly use it.

[Hanners]

Well, in a sense we already have this ability because we always make forum threads for new articles and news stories - Perhaps we simply need to extend what we do with news posts (where they always link back to the forum) to all articles?

[happosai]

Yeah, I'd say just link them through to the relevant thread on the forum, rather than having them as a separate entity.

[Happosai]

[Afro25]

Pretty much what everyone has said so far, allowing comments is just inviting spammers and more hassle for you to police the comments, linking everything to a topic on the forum would be more ideal but then comments are still only limited to forum users - Which isnt really a bad thing, but if you are looking for opinions on a topic then obviously adding a comment section without the need to sign up would bring in more results.

[Ross]

There are a number of solutions that use very tight third-party security to stop spammers and whatnot, and they work very well from what I've seen.

I'm using sites like The Times and QJ.Net as templates - I even enjoy reading comments posted by idiots, as they always show themselves up... Policing swear-words and removing the ability for comments to contain links would probably fix 99% of the potential issues automatically anyway.

[Diablos]

Only allow members with 200+ posts to comment on those articles would give a certain amount of quality control, since anyone with 200 or more posts will be more likely to care what people will think of them if they make a stupid post. They'll also likely obey any rules you set without fuss.

[puru2]

Originally Posted by Diablos

Only allow members with 200+ posts to comment on those articles would give a certain amount of quality control, since anyone with 200 or more posts will be more likely to care what people will think of them if they make a stupid post. They'll also likely obey any rules you set without fuss.

I wouldn't say so. I would say you will get people joining the forum to just post lots of pointless stuff to make the 200 up, also what about the ones who do post. But don't post often, and haven't got to the 200 limit?

Personally I prefer the idea of just keeping it linked to the forum. As i tend not to really look at the site from my mobile.

[Ross]

Additionally I'd make sure you only saw 3 posts per page unless you clicked on "view all comments"

Just to get all the info out there.

One of my concerns is that a lot of people who post on the forum don't read the site - the main site has a LOT more throughput than the forum.

[Afro25]

Originally Posted by Ross

One of my concerns is that a lot of people who post on the forum don't read the site - the main site has a LOT more throughput than the forum.

Not sure how you could counteract that, as people will only look through what they're personally interested in.
I read the main site whenever theres something new up, but thats basically it, most of my time is spent on here.

[Weirdo]

Well, it would definitely make sense to use the same user database, which, in turn, would allow the banning and moderation system currently here to be used to allow/prevent comments being made.

We definitely want to restrict commenting though. The Independant recently integrated their comment system with Livejournal, which has since brought spamming to their site at a massive level.

To counteract the above comments tho, perhaps allow users to register through the main site, without touching the forum, but allow comments made to show on the forum, and changes made on the forum to be translated onto the site. Essentially, they post on the article and its viewable there with the 3 posts/all posts thing. But moderations can be made within the forum interface and those changes translated onto the main site. That way it reduces the amount of coding to simply database buggery, and we can use the tools which the forum provides.

[trismugistus]

I'd say give it a go and if it doesn't work you can always remove it.