

How Facebook ruined comments (at least for me) - technologizer
http://techland.time.com/2013/05/12/facebook-comments/

======
rcfox
Google+ does this too, except for top-level articles. My office was using G+
to share articles and status updates, but Google seems to have gone out of
their way to make that as frustrating an experience as possible. There's no
chronological view anymore, and sometimes it just doesn't show articles from
some people unless you go directly to their profile.

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jbk
We've had the same issue on our page (VLC 93000+ likes), and we really thought
it was a bug: the reply was above the question...

We tried to remove and redo the comments, but it always ended like that.

I'm glad to not be alone :)

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raymondduke
Commenting online is an afterthought, and it is really sad to me why this is
so. Disqus and Livefyre are what most people use, but they have a ton of room
for improvement. Some might say that they are doing really well, which would
be true; however, there is hardly any competition, so anything Disqus and
Livefyre do will be perceived as well, or simply, good enough.

I've been working on a way to redo commenting in my spare time, and I would
like for it to become a thing. My idea consists of synced comments, an RSS
like feed, a one column design (no threaded comments!) with expanding and
minimizing replies, and a currency connected with real money that people can
use to tip one another. I know it sounds far fetched, and it is, but I truly
believe that commenting should be given saliency if writing and publishing
online is going to move forward.

The next step is making my designs and ideas into a reality, however, I don't
know how to code. I'm seeking someone who does, and in the meantime, I am
teaching myself how to get starting with programming. The thing is, I could
spend the next 1-2 years of my life learning how to code what I want to do
when there is someone out there who knows how to do it already.

I suppose this comment is also to raise awareness for what I want to do for
the future of commenting online. Send me a DM on Twitter @raymondduke if you
are interested. I do have a plan to monetize from day one. I'll gladly tell
you what I want to do and if you are interested maybe we can start making this
happen.

~~~
richardjordan
Bite the bullet and learn to code. I did. It's easier if you have a project in
mind. You can be competent enough to whip up an MVP in about 10-12 weeks if
you work hard learning Ruby On Rails.

~~~
raymondduke
I've tried to get started a few times and I am finding it to be the most
frustrating thing I've ever done in my life. I think there is something in my
brain that is completely against what is involved with coding; it's like I
have some cognitive-allergic reaction to it.

But, I see your point. And I want to put what I want to do a reality, so I
will keep trying. I think it would just be so much better if I can find
someone to work with instead of try to do it all myself.

~~~
aerique
_I've tried to get started a few times and I am finding it to be the most
frustrating thing I've ever done in my life. I think there is something in my
brain that is completely against what is involved with coding; it's like I
have some cognitive-allergic reaction to it._

Nah, that's just what's it is like learning to code. You just have to get
through it and get more experienced. Once you're past the frustrating parts it
becomes really enjoyable.

However, I don't know what language you're starting out with but that also
makes a huge difference. Some approaches just click better with people than
others. I love Lisp, others can't stand it. I hate C pointer syntax, it always
confuses me while I had no problems with 'pointers' in 68000 assembly for
example.

Just try out a couple of languages.

~~~
raymondduke
A couple of languages have been suggested to me already. I just don't know
what one is best for my purposes. I was told to start with HTML5 and CSS3.
Someone told me to stay away from Django, but to learn Python.

Does all code get the same results? Is it just a matter of preference? Or can
some code do things that other code can't , thus making certain goals only
possible with certain language?

~~~
adrik
<http://autotelicum.github.io/Smooth-CoffeeScript/> is an excellent
introduction into just-enough-code to make something. coffeescript is a much
easier to understand javascript and if you combine it with node.js to do a web
app, you can code your entire project in one language (plus some html and css
markup).

~~~
raymondduke
I'm checking it out, thanks. From what I've been told, what I want to do is a
"big project" -- in the words of another commenter: "you're going to need
front end design and code (html, css and javascript), some sort of server side
code (php, python, ruby, c# ...) and a database of some sort (MySQL, NoSQL,
PostgreSQL, Oracle ...). the best place to start would be html and css
though﻿"

So far the link you shared seems to be doing a good job of introducing code at
the entry level, but as being able to code my entire project with it, I am
skeptical.

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k-mcgrady
I haven't noticed this myself (and I have the replies feature) so maybe it's
just one of many things they're testing with a limited number of users. I
agree with the OP though, I don't see how this would be useful for anyone.

~~~
Flimm
_> It turns out that the change doesn’t affect most personal Profiles.
Instead, it’s only applicable to Pages — such as the one for TIME — and for
individuals with more than 10,000 followers, who Facebook thinks are likely
have active communities on their pages._

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aneth4
Threaded comments are a good thing. This seems like a UI problem. One
suggestion:

1) Put the thread reply text field at the top of the comments and show new
replies at the top, at least for the user who made the comment.

2) Replying anywhere else should require clicking on Reply under that comment.

This makes it intuitively clear that thread replies are not replies to a
thread comment.

This would take users some time to adjust to, but should fix the problem.

I know at least one site that does this. Ahem.

EDIT: Looking more carefully at the second screen shot, it looks like they did
this. Seems like a non-issue in that case. The first screenshot for some
reason doesn't have that change. Who knows if they are A/B testing or what.
Strange that the OP did not notice this difference.

~~~
staltz
Threaded comments are a bad thing. I've gone through this thoroughly in a blog
post ([http://blog.iroquote.com/post/45908133231/5-reasons-why-
thre...](http://blog.iroquote.com/post/45908133231/5-reasons-why-threaded-
discussions-stink-and-a)), but here is an overview of why:

1\. Screen width limits the depth of threaded replies.

2\. Indented replies look horrible on mobile screens, and make the depth of
reason (1) even smaller.

3\. We (typically) lose chronological order.

4\. A complex comment tree makes it cumbersome to track who replied to what.

5\. Non-techy users don't get it well, which eventually leads to a
inconsistent tree.

I think the search for an ideal comment system is a problem worth solving. IMO
it is best solved by:

1\. A single thread in chronological order.

2\. Quote feature, like in forums, to allow direct replies.

3\. Some summarization technique to highlight relevant comments.

That's what I'm doing at my startup, and I would like to see other approaches
too, because it's about time we figure out how to do an intuitive and powerful
comment system.

~~~
antihero
I have to say, having used newsgroups, forums, and reddit for years and years,
I totally disagree - conversations by their nature are threaded, not linear -
people need to have the freedom to break off and discuss tangents without
impacting the main thing.

With the quote feature you just end up with giant quote pyramids and
impossible to track discussions.

That said, with Facebook it seems they have a) broken the chronology, which is
insane, and b) not made it damned obvious that it's a threaded system, hence
the confusion.

~~~
staltz
Giant quote pyramids are a big mistake of old forum systems. But imagine
quoting without quotes-in-quotes. Combine that with "click on quote" to see
the post.

BTW, HN also breaks chronology.

~~~
aneth4
HN only breaks chronology on sister threads, where it doesn't matter.

In 8 years (or whatever) of reading HN comment, I've never once had an issue
with chronology of comments.

If there were no threads, it would be such a mess, it wouldn't be worth
reading.

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onlyup
How can they make a mistake like this? Unless they are aiming to change how
people comment on things. That won't happen without an interface change IMO
because people are used to the way it was for about 4-5 years..

~~~
saurik
Well, they needed to do something about the comments on really large pages,
because those were useless before: you'd see a disconnected selection of the
25 most recent comments and a link "2864 comments, click here to show 25
more". Those people were only sort of / sometimes responding to each other,
and even when they were the comments all had tunnel-vision on the most recent
25. Even just showing "comments on this massive post made by your friends"
would be an epic improvement (and something it seems they are now both able to
do and are actually doing), but that already breaks chronology even without
"bubbling".

------
0x0
Yep, this is a huge failure. I've made sure to tell all page admins I know to
not enable it.

~~~
batiudrami
For pages over a critical number of likes it's still better though. Once you
hit over 100 or so comments, unthreaded commenting is just too hard on
Facebook (especially since you can't easily load all the comments at once and
Ctrl-F for what you're looking for).

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ryanmerket
This is only an issue because the mobile app doesn't have Replies yet. once
the mobile apps support it the chronological issue will go away. Relax.

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waltz
I think it blends in well with the nature of Facebook comments. Most of the
comments are quick observations about a post. So it's better to absorb the
relevant observations first then continue reading if it sounds interesting.
Plus the reply feature fixes any chronological issue.

~~~
omaranto
How does the reply feature fix the chronology problems? If you want to make a
comment that refers to two previous comments, where do you put it to guarantee
it stays after both of them?

~~~
waltz
That kind of reference is messy even with chronological order. It's better to
directly quote a post.

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codva
I've noticed that when I comment on a page and come back later, my comment
appears at the top. Now I realize it probably only appears that way to me.
That's good, because I was wondering why FB was choosing to highlight the
comments that it did.

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ChuckMcM
I think it's a bit like the weather in New England, if its not to your liking
you need to go inside and have a cup of coffee and then come back outside, all
new weather. :-)

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hnha
I turned it on for a ~75k page and regret it. Does someone know if it can be
disabled? I did not find anything in the settings.

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lmm
HN has the same problem (comment threads get reordered to put the "best"
first, so it's very hard to tell what you have and haven't already read), but
we seem to be ok with it.

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hackerboos
I find it annoying that I still have to click 'load comments' several times in
order to find my own.

