4 ms·

Do you thread comments on your startup?

12 points by spoiledtechie 18y ago

andr 18y ago
Is it implied that a startup has to have comments?
- joshuarr 18y ago
  It was implied: "The current standard for any interaction is the comments section of the sites. The comment section is the talk back, the conversation to the site. It is what allows for user participation and what most people would declare what Web 2.0 really is." This kind of status-quo talk makes me simultaneously angry and sleepy.
nx 18y ago
If there are comments, you should thread them. Not Lifehacker-style, though.
- unalone 18y ago
  I disagree: I don't thread them. Reason being, it kills linear conversation, and that's something I don't want. Linear conversation helps keep a strong conversation going. So on the site, there are two "commentesque" systems. There's one for the general critiques (the focus of my site), which don't get threaded because they're grouped by the user that made them. There's no discussion in those comments, or there's not much. The focus is on constructive, objective feedback. For the forum, we decided to go almost entirely minimal. A screenshot from the alpha can be found here: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5 http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5 The idea is that we wanted to focus on back-and-forth talk. The three of us in that thread all knew each other on an older site of mine, so that's already established, but we want a feel of community. As in, instead of lurkers and posters, you've got a place where if you're new, you can talk to older users and become sort-of welcomed into things. You lose that with threads, because suddenly it's all-too-easy for a user to get completely ignored if they don't join one of the bigger threads.
  - nx 18y ago
    Well, I like your point. The only problem I see with linear conversations is when the comments are too many to follow responses easily, things get really messy at that point and the very best one can do is jump around following links and trying to understand the dialog. And, you're right, if you don't join a popular thread in a threaded comment system, you will probably be ignored. But you won't if you're one of the first to post in that page, thus somehow making the oldest more relevant, and if you get lots of replies your comment will be seen by more people, which makes sense to me since it would be a hot topic. There is no perfect commenting system, I guess, but the big flaw in linear conversations is that replies are not emphasized and the relations between comments is easily lost. It would be useful when time is relevant. I would prefer a threaded system, sorted by rating as well, kind of what Reddit or HN has: the hottest, top-rated, most recent comments on the top; the oldest, lowest-rated, not-replied-to ones more likely to be ignored.
ntoshev 18y ago
Threaded comments scale the conversation better. Linear stay more focused.
- dasil003 18y ago
  Concise and precise analysis. Most sites don't have the comment volume to merit threads, and a threaded discussion is not truly a "conversation" as the author wants to paint it.
pclark 18y ago
my startup will have threaded comments. I started making my own comments engine, but realized I'd just be making Disqus (YC startup). Disqus is very easy to integrate with your design, has a fantastic feature set, Facebook connect and great development team. Some issues are that it won't integrate with your accounts (obviously) and it can be quite slow sometimes.
- dasil003 18y ago
  The big downside is what happens when they go belly-up?
  - compay 18y ago
    They have an API that lets you access all your data. You can back it up nightly as XML files and just port it into something else if you ever want or need to.
    - dasil003 18y ago
      My comment was a little harsh. It's great that they offer that, and I'm probably rushing to judgement. But honestly the idea that at some point in the future when my site is humming along and I'm not thinking about it I'm going to have to drop everything and port the comments to a new system to avoid losing them makes me want to just implement my own comment system and be done with it.
      - pclark 18y ago
        easier said than done :) I believe if they were going to do something controversial (eg, close down / remove big features) they'd let us know in advance. They need me far more than I need them.
      - compay 18y ago
        I don't think it was harsh, I think it's a good point. Like you said, you have to balance the convenience vs. the risk.
csytan 18y ago
Threading is a great idea because you can easily follow a discussion, and it takes up much less space than quoting. The disadvantage is that often there is a lot of scrolling to be done when you're not interested in a particular subtopic. I've been experimenting with a tree-like layout which doesn't have that problem (although it may have other problems). It's no where near completion, but here's an example with data pulled from a reddit thread: http://api.webnodes.org/ http://api.webnodes.org/ Source: http://code.google.com/p/webnodes/ http://code.google.com/p/webnodes/
sam_in_nyc 18y ago
My start-up is all about comments. I've spent months thinking about how to go about commenting... and I still haven't cracked it yet, but let me just spill my thoughts on the matter. Threaded/Linear have their pros and cons. To have threaded comments, it means you are limiting the user to explicitly reply to one comment. As an aside, it's possible to make one comment be a reply to many, and then creating some really neat conversation graph out of it, but that's just so complicated. I think we can all agree that threading is the ability to reply to one comment, and create a tree structure of comments. Threaded comments create a tree of conversation; it's highly structured. Nearly as important as your post is where in the thread it goes. You lose the option to post something more general, or something that references several other posts. The importance in threaded conversations is the structure and not chronology. Linear comments is all about chronology. The conversation evolves over time, and you lose the structure. It's flat. If you want to reply to someone, you're just quoting then. By the way, a linear commenting system without quoting, in my opinion, is the lowest form of commenting. It almost angers me to see it being used, anywhere. Nearly all forums use non-threaded, and it seems to work out great! It's more of a community builder -- let's all join this conversation as it passes through time. Threaded conversations have the problem of becoming highly specific very quickly. But, they allow the structure to be clearly visible. Also, threaded conversations don't allow you to dig for what you want as easily. You'll never be able to order a tree-like structure in any meaningful way unless you flatten it. The conclusion I ultimately reached was always use threaded, because if you're smart about it, threaded implies linear as well. You can always flatten a tree -- the data is there. But it's much harder to take a linear set of comments and imply which is a child of which based on quoted text. In short, you can go from threaded to non-threaded, but not vice versa. So, I allow my users to view the conversation as a thread, with very smooth features, like instantly sorting children of any post by Date, Username, or Score. And, coming soon, I'm going to allow a non-threaded view. It will just flatten the tree and show posts, in any order they choose, date, score, username, etc. If the post is a "reply" then I just annote: "In reply to [link]summary of replied post[/link]" One major issue with threading is scalability. What happens when you have 500 comments in one giant tree? Which do you show? How do you prune the tree? Do you show that gem of a comment that has a depth of 8? Do you hide it's siblings or parents? It really becomes a lot of trouble... and the solution seems to be: "ajax it in." -sam

12 points by spoiledtechie 18y ago

andr 18y ago

Is it implied that a startup has to have comments?

joshuarr 18y ago
It was implied: "The current standard for any interaction is the comments section of the sites. The comment section is the talk back, the conversation to the site. It is what allows for user participation and what most people would declare what Web 2.0 really is." This kind of status-quo talk makes me simultaneously angry and sleepy.

nx 18y ago

If there are comments, you should thread them. Not Lifehacker-style, though.

unalone 18y ago
I disagree: I don't thread them. Reason being, it kills linear conversation, and that's something I don't want. Linear conversation helps keep a strong conversation going. So on the site, there are two "commentesque" systems. There's one for the general critiques (the focus of my site), which don't get threaded because they're grouped by the user that made them. There's no discussion in those comments, or there's not much. The focus is on constructive, objective feedback. For the forum, we decided to go almost entirely minimal. A screenshot from the alpha can be found here: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5 http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=f18vb&s=5 The idea is that we wanted to focus on back-and-forth talk. The three of us in that thread all knew each other on an older site of mine, so that's already established, but we want a feel of community. As in, instead of lurkers and posters, you've got a place where if you're new, you can talk to older users and become sort-of welcomed into things. You lose that with threads, because suddenly it's all-too-easy for a user to get completely ignored if they don't join one of the bigger threads.
- nx 18y ago
  Well, I like your point. The only problem I see with linear conversations is when the comments are too many to follow responses easily, things get really messy at that point and the very best one can do is jump around following links and trying to understand the dialog. And, you're right, if you don't join a popular thread in a threaded comment system, you will probably be ignored. But you won't if you're one of the first to post in that page, thus somehow making the oldest more relevant, and if you get lots of replies your comment will be seen by more people, which makes sense to me since it would be a hot topic. There is no perfect commenting system, I guess, but the big flaw in linear conversations is that replies are not emphasized and the relations between comments is easily lost. It would be useful when time is relevant. I would prefer a threaded system, sorted by rating as well, kind of what Reddit or HN has: the hottest, top-rated, most recent comments on the top; the oldest, lowest-rated, not-replied-to ones more likely to be ignored.

ntoshev 18y ago

Threaded comments scale the conversation better. Linear stay more focused.

dasil003 18y ago
Concise and precise analysis. Most sites don't have the comment volume to merit threads, and a threaded discussion is not truly a "conversation" as the author wants to paint it.

pclark 18y ago

my startup will have threaded comments. I started making my own comments engine, but realized I'd just be making Disqus (YC startup). Disqus is very easy to integrate with your design, has a fantastic feature set, Facebook connect and great development team. Some issues are that it won't integrate with your accounts (obviously) and it can be quite slow sometimes.

dasil003 18y ago
The big downside is what happens when they go belly-up?
- compay 18y ago
  They have an API that lets you access all your data. You can back it up nightly as XML files and just port it into something else if you ever want or need to.
  - dasil003 18y ago
    My comment was a little harsh. It's great that they offer that, and I'm probably rushing to judgement. But honestly the idea that at some point in the future when my site is humming along and I'm not thinking about it I'm going to have to drop everything and port the comments to a new system to avoid losing them makes me want to just implement my own comment system and be done with it.
    - pclark 18y ago
      easier said than done :) I believe if they were going to do something controversial (eg, close down / remove big features) they'd let us know in advance. They need me far more than I need them.
    - compay 18y ago
      I don't think it was harsh, I think it's a good point. Like you said, you have to balance the convenience vs. the risk.

csytan 18y ago

Threading is a great idea because you can easily follow a discussion, and it takes up much less space than quoting. The disadvantage is that often there is a lot of scrolling to be done when you're not interested in a particular subtopic. I've been experimenting with a tree-like layout which doesn't have that problem (although it may have other problems). It's no where near completion, but here's an example with data pulled from a reddit thread: http://api.webnodes.org/ http://api.webnodes.org/ Source: http://code.google.com/p/webnodes/ http://code.google.com/p/webnodes/

sam_in_nyc 18y ago

My start-up is all about comments. I've spent months thinking about how to go about commenting... and I still haven't cracked it yet, but let me just spill my thoughts on the matter. Threaded/Linear have their pros and cons. To have threaded comments, it means you are limiting the user to explicitly reply to one comment. As an aside, it's possible to make one comment be a reply to many, and then creating some really neat conversation graph out of it, but that's just so complicated. I think we can all agree that threading is the ability to reply to one comment, and create a tree structure of comments. Threaded comments create a tree of conversation; it's highly structured. Nearly as important as your post is where in the thread it goes. You lose the option to post something more general, or something that references several other posts. The importance in threaded conversations is the structure and not chronology. Linear comments is all about chronology. The conversation evolves over time, and you lose the structure. It's flat. If you want to reply to someone, you're just quoting then. By the way, a linear commenting system without quoting, in my opinion, is the lowest form of commenting. It almost angers me to see it being used, anywhere. Nearly all forums use non-threaded, and it seems to work out great! It's more of a community builder -- let's all join this conversation as it passes through time. Threaded conversations have the problem of becoming highly specific very quickly. But, they allow the structure to be clearly visible. Also, threaded conversations don't allow you to dig for what you want as easily. You'll never be able to order a tree-like structure in any meaningful way unless you flatten it. The conclusion I ultimately reached was always use threaded, because if you're smart about it, threaded implies linear as well. You can always flatten a tree -- the data is there. But it's much harder to take a linear set of comments and imply which is a child of which based on quoted text. In short, you can go from threaded to non-threaded, but not vice versa. So, I allow my users to view the conversation as a thread, with very smooth features, like instantly sorting children of any post by Date, Username, or Score. And, coming soon, I'm going to allow a non-threaded view. It will just flatten the tree and show posts, in any order they choose, date, score, username, etc. If the post is a "reply" then I just annote: "In reply to [link]summary of replied post[/link]" One major issue with threading is scalability. What happens when you have 500 comments in one giant tree? Which do you show? How do you prune the tree? Do you show that gem of a comment that has a depth of 8? Do you hide it's siblings or parents? It really becomes a lot of trouble... and the solution seems to be: "ajax it in." -sam