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Commenting is a ridiculously underserved market. It's so pathetic that I still enounter old barely usable bbs systems that are still thriving. How is there not

Commenting is a ridiculously underserved market. It's so pathetic that I still enounter old barely usable bbs systems that are still thriving. How is there not a decent, usable threaded comment system, outside of forums? I've said it before: there needs to be a ubiquitous commenting system and it should work like a forum. Disqus only scratches the surface of this and still has seen remarkable success; somebody needs to take it to the next level. If disqus is the best we've got, there's certainly opportunity here. Add up/downvotes. Even YouTube comments have been made bearable by this. Show/hide children. Easy registration. Multiple threads. Notifications when someone replies. It's 2010 and commenting systems have barely advanced beyond guestbooks.

thedz 16y ago
FWIW, at Disqus we've tried making registration as easy as possible. You're also able to show and hide children, though not all sites enabled this. We're also looking to improve notifications, so that area is definitely on our radar.
- photon_off 16y ago
  Disqus has done an amazing job at improving their feature set. I remember when you guys just started that I couldn't believe you were gaining traction. (Tangent: If I could suggest anything, it would be having up/down buttons instead of the "like" button, which is both button hidden alongside the "reply" button, and is an important/risky looking form button. I've noticed that only a small percentage of users use the "like" feature, whereas probably a large percentage of people have a strong enough opinion about a comment to take action. I believe the solution would be to make up/down buttons (arrows, actually), putting them in a more visible spot, and making them look risk-free.) Great job so far, but I just see potential for a much better way to comment and browse comments.
edanm 16y ago
You look at forums as a good example? IMO, forums are the first thing that needs to be fixed. Stack Overflow/Hacker News have shown us how much better information is when it's organized using tags, comments and the like. And yet, every day, I stumble into some old phpBB, which is terribly organized and impossible to find information in! Splitting up a forum into 10 different areas is so terrible - before I even start seeing information, I already have to understand how everything works and is organized, etc. I've been waiting a long time for some startup to implement a modern forum system that actually works.
- photon_off 16y ago
  Absolutely I think forums are great. The biggest thing missing from forums is the up/down voting goodness that brings the best content to the top. It's important to note that forums and comments facilitate two different things. Forums are really, really good at facilitating discussion, whether or not the best content goes to the top is usually irrelevant (though, I'm claiming it could be made better). I think SO and HN generally suck at this, because I don't know when somebody has replied to one of my posts. However, SO and HN excel at having great content, and having that rise to the top. I attribute this to moderation and the up/down voting. I don't think it is impossible to have both features in a commenting system. > Forums need to be fixed. Really? There are thriving forums for nearly every topic imaginable. It's probably not due to forums being difficult to use.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  I've been thinking about this for a long time. The initial problem is that any old forum is going to have a community around it that knows how it works. This makes any change disruptive to users. Secondly, most information in a forum exists in a manner that is already organized in a certain way to account for the forum. So, you have a lot of content that is already organized and should be easily found. Hacker News is no different. It's a forum with threads. SO was the first real departure from this. However SO succeeded for reasons besides the organization. First, it had big names behind it who could pimp it out. Secondly, it was SEO'd well. Finally, it made participation a game. The organization of SO isn't really better then what a forum can offer. So, I'm back to thinking how I'd go about navigating a large, information intensive forum, but it's not easy. SO is great for Question/Answer problems, but that's hardly the only things forums provide. Wiki's are another version, though very much document-centric. They allow for discussion and interaction, but in a different manner. Maybe instead of talking about it, I should just code-up one of my ideas and see what people think.
photon_off 16y ago
I don't understand why this is downvoted. Is everybody satisfied with how the majority of commenting systems work? Do I just have high standards?

thedz 16y ago

FWIW, at Disqus we've tried making registration as easy as possible. You're also able to show and hide children, though not all sites enabled this. We're also looking to improve notifications, so that area is definitely on our radar.

photon_off 16y ago
Disqus has done an amazing job at improving their feature set. I remember when you guys just started that I couldn't believe you were gaining traction. (Tangent: If I could suggest anything, it would be having up/down buttons instead of the "like" button, which is both button hidden alongside the "reply" button, and is an important/risky looking form button. I've noticed that only a small percentage of users use the "like" feature, whereas probably a large percentage of people have a strong enough opinion about a comment to take action. I believe the solution would be to make up/down buttons (arrows, actually), putting them in a more visible spot, and making them look risk-free.) Great job so far, but I just see potential for a much better way to comment and browse comments.

edanm 16y ago

You look at forums as a good example? IMO, forums are the first thing that needs to be fixed. Stack Overflow/Hacker News have shown us how much better information is when it's organized using tags, comments and the like. And yet, every day, I stumble into some old phpBB, which is terribly organized and impossible to find information in! Splitting up a forum into 10 different areas is so terrible - before I even start seeing information, I already have to understand how everything works and is organized, etc. I've been waiting a long time for some startup to implement a modern forum system that actually works.

photon_off 16y ago
Absolutely I think forums are great. The biggest thing missing from forums is the up/down voting goodness that brings the best content to the top. It's important to note that forums and comments facilitate two different things. Forums are really, really good at facilitating discussion, whether or not the best content goes to the top is usually irrelevant (though, I'm claiming it could be made better). I think SO and HN generally suck at this, because I don't know when somebody has replied to one of my posts. However, SO and HN excel at having great content, and having that rise to the top. I attribute this to moderation and the up/down voting. I don't think it is impossible to have both features in a commenting system. > Forums need to be fixed. Really? There are thriving forums for nearly every topic imaginable. It's probably not due to forums being difficult to use.
jasonlotito 16y ago
I've been thinking about this for a long time. The initial problem is that any old forum is going to have a community around it that knows how it works. This makes any change disruptive to users. Secondly, most information in a forum exists in a manner that is already organized in a certain way to account for the forum. So, you have a lot of content that is already organized and should be easily found. Hacker News is no different. It's a forum with threads. SO was the first real departure from this. However SO succeeded for reasons besides the organization. First, it had big names behind it who could pimp it out. Secondly, it was SEO'd well. Finally, it made participation a game. The organization of SO isn't really better then what a forum can offer. So, I'm back to thinking how I'd go about navigating a large, information intensive forum, but it's not easy. SO is great for Question/Answer problems, but that's hardly the only things forums provide. Wiki's are another version, though very much document-centric. They allow for discussion and interaction, but in a different manner. Maybe instead of talking about it, I should just code-up one of my ideas and see what people think.

photon_off 16y ago

I don't understand why this is downvoted. Is everybody satisfied with how the majority of commenting systems work? Do I just have high standards?