Disqus out, forums in.
Originally published at: http://ultiworld.com/2016/07/11/changing-comment-system/
Please let us know what you think about the new comment system. Follow the instructions in the post to create an account.
If you’re new to the forums, welcome!
For people who are already logged in to the forums, it would be really great to be able to comment directly from the article. This seems like it can’t be impossible, technology-wise, and would make people lots more likely to comment.
I strongly favor this change. Looking forward to more usage of the forums.
My biggest complaint with the old comment system was that there was no good way to find new comments (largely due to the nesting structure).
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No doubt. It’s something we will definitely look into.
Bummer. I liked the Disqus system (and seeing comments on profiles across platforms), but those ads needed to go.
It is a much requested feature of Discourse (our forum software), but as of right now they do not support commenting into the forums from an outside site (even if it’s your own property). Not currently a priority for them due to the difficulty of replicating their robust editor in a compatible way on third-party websites.
If they ever do add it, we will definitely implement as soon as the feature is made available.
I do understand your reasons for moving away from Disqus. I noticed that the ads seemed to be getting worse.
I’m not yet a fan of this commenting system though.
As samth implied, I think it’s kludgy to click away from the article in order to comment. I would guess that the higher barrier to entry will discourage new voices from adding their 2 cents, but I hope I’m wrong, and you can probably collect data about the ratio of unique viewers to number of commenters and comments to monitor this. If this hypothesis is correct, it could reduce the breadth of voices.
I also don’t like it that if I choose to comment on the article, I can’t see the article in the same window. I think this discourages serious and accurate engagement with what the author wrote, and thus could reduce the depth of comments. I could probably, when I’m reading an article on a big monitor, open the forum in a new window and then resize the two windows so that I could see both, but I wonder how often I’ll go to the trouble. And on smaller screens, particularly on handhelds, this would be impossible.
If you decide to transfer to a new new discussion system, I would hope you could find an open source alternative that would fit with your web design/architecture.
Maybe I’ll get used to this system and find some advantages to it.
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Nailed it. I get that forums can be great, but it’s a relative ghost town around here other than Regionals posts and the occasional burst of conversation. The comments being rerouted may help that, but it does increase the steps needed for engagement.
Not having the article to read is spot on as well. It also makes commenting via mobile a far more difficult experience.
Ultimately, we are more interested in comment quality than comment frequency. And I think that pushing comments here into the forums could be a good way to boost comment quality. Currently, posts that contain some great insight in the comment section often get bogged down by tangents, drive-bys, and other noise. I think this is another step in reducing that.
But we will see. If it turns out to be a disaster, we’ll figure out something else.
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Wanting to see the full article while commenting is a fair point and looks like something we can remedy!
Moving forward the forums thread should have the full article text at the top instead of just the excerpt. May require some tweaks as we see how the formatting gets transferred, but should be a good first step.
/cc @titustradewell too
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Other people have already mentioned it, but forcing people off the article to comment will def. lower total comments. I get that you care more about ‘quality’ over ‘quantity’, but when the vast majority of your articles sit at under 10 comments, perhaps quantity is currently more important?
Additionally, moving away from nesting is a step backwards.