New Reg comments system ready to launch

Exciting news from Vulture Towers - we're overhauling your comments system to make it more accessible and satisfying for you to use. After an extensive consultation with our valued board of 'tame' commentards - those of you who responded eagerly to our call for comment consultants last year - and weekly all-staff comments …

[Anonymous Coward]

Behave yourselves

What about an unhide button to reveal the true identities and email addresses of ACs.

[Sarah Bee]

Re: Behave yourselves

Noted - I'll pass that straight along to the techies.

[cmw]

What about my Android Phone

Why is there not an app for Android?

You are missing a trick there

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant ideas

Is this part of project White Rabbit?

[Neill Mitchell]

So just to be clear

Will there be no way to post comments for free? Or is free commenting just restricted?

If not, good luck with charging for comments. I suspect your numbers will plummet. That will be a sad day indeed.

Is this another iPad inspired toe in the water pricing scheme? Seems to be all the rage at the moment.

[Anonymous Coward]

D'oh!

Sorry, what's the date again?

[Psmiffy]

Nothing in this world is free

Except perhaps the taking to task those who are quite inclined to believe everylast word that proceedeth from the keyboard of the Reg Team on 01/04 of every year.

Just saying is all.

Do we also get a button that sends an electric shock to directly to the Hack in questions chair when we really don't like an article?

I would really appreciate such a thing, you can charge extra for it, doubly so if you post a video of said moments to youtube.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderatrix

Is it just me but ... when I see the word Moderatrix I picture a woman clad head to toe in rubber? I'd gladly pad £12/month for that icon ...

rubber coat on ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Love it

....enough said.

[Eddie Edwards]

This is TERRIBLE

These ideas are RIDICULOUS.

£12 is FAR too low a price for the privilege of commenting.

I would gladly sell my house and all its contents in order to be allowed to comment further.

[Steven Raith]

I approve.

About time these commentards were put in their place.

I'd like to be put in my place with ankle/wrist restraints, a ball gag and a blindfold please, Ms Moderatrix.

Steven R

[Rumcajz]

Is the title still required?

I, for one, welcome our new comments system overlord.

[Christoph]

Obvious omission

Please add a function to translate plain English into amanfromarsese.

[Anonymous Coward]

Already done...

Yahoo provide a service: http://hsiflebab.yahoo.com/

(it appears that the code is based on the old Babelfish site by AltaVista)

[Anonymous Coward]

Super platinum subscription also av ailable?

For those who really wish to feel the wrath of the moderatrix

[Ian Bradshaw]

You guys after a new Ferrari each or something?

Commenter zapping: All commenter's names will come with a 'zap' button - after this is clicked by three other separate commenters, the offending account will be deleted.

So what your saying is that you pay your £5/12 ... 3 people don't like something you write and you loose your subscription ... ... ... ridiculous if that's how its going to work.

I would assume that for those that do pay there won't be any adverts?

Seems like a license to print money is being requested rather than any service benefits!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool of the day...

Try reading before commenting (or are you beta-testing the Instaspeak button?):

"Standard subscription (£5 per year) - Enables you to post comments under moderation with the new 'three strikes' system"

So, the three-strikes rule only applies to the £5 cheapskate subscription. Seems only reasonable to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes!

I want the sound effects. Seriously!!!!

[Gordon Matson]

seems fair

Can I send cash?

[Dave S 1]

About time

Sign me up.

[Pete 2]

Almost good enough

You had me going for a bit. Until the stuff about paying to post. Surely not even the most crazed, foreign news magnate would be daft enough to charge people for content. Oh, hang on ....

[GrahamT]

I've never been so...

Sorry, you have used your quote of comments for today. Please try again tomorrow.

[Thomas 4]

Sign me up!

Some of these new features look truly spiffing - is it cash only or do you also accept payment in human blood, souls or American Express?

[lglethal]

Come on now...

Come on now your just being silly. No one these days accepts American Express...

[Pete 43]

Pay more for you to less work?

cool

[steve 44]

So then......

I guess this will be one of the last comments i post!

As much as i love el reg, i'm not going to pay to say "someone is wrong on the internet!"

Doubt i'll be missed :)

[Anonymous Coward]

@Neill Mitchell

Whoooooooooosh!

Look at the date. look at the date

[Anonymous Coward]

"@ AC"

Whooooosh!

Look at the reply button! look at the reply button

[Neill Mitchell]

I know.

I feel a right twat ;)

[Tim Wolfe-Barry]

What about a 'First Post' button?

One that automatically makes your comment the 'First Post', whether you were actually First or not.

Of course users on the Premium subscription could jump past 'First Post' comments from those paying less.

;-P

(if only the BT Flood/Fire were an April Fool)

[riCh chestMat]

If you had stuck with just the custom icons bit

... then you might have got me. However it does look like you have other customers from reading the comments.

[gumbald]

Eh?

Comments? I prefer cabbages.

[Glyn 2]

icons

48 hours to get any new icon, guaranteed?

how long before the bottom of the page is awash with thousands of mini pics :P

[Daniel 1]

But I only post on here since the Samaritans started hanging up...

You need a function that Inserts crude sexual innuendo about Paris Hilton (whoever she is) that automatically makes the writer sound like the sort of man, real women cross the street to avoid (assuming he ever went outdoors).

[Darren Coleman]

Needs more options

Need a £25 p/a option to allow us to delete other peoples comments.

Also, £35 p/a option to allow us to edit other peoples comments to misrepresent their position or call them silly poo-heads, or something.

[Sarah Bee]

Re: Needs more options

We're mulling the idea of commenter-moderators, Darren - would you fancy the gig? You could just drop in a few times a day.

Any more suggestions folks? Keep 'em coming.

[Tony S]

@ Sarah

How about a button that can send a reverse electrical pulse down the Interwebs so that we can zap the fingers of people posting a comm....... zzzzz, zzzzzz, zzzzzzz, zzzzzz

Oh right... you already thought of that

[Sheepdog]

timings

Are you sure about announcing this on April 1st?

[stu 4]

April Fool

I imagine. Who the hell is gonna pay to post mince.

[Witty username]

Daily Mail filter?

What about a DM filter, so any comments from DMTards involving terroists, the children (or indeed, terrorist children) can be filtered out!

And to keep things fair, a Reverse DM filter, chaning all comment text to "SEND EM ALL BACK IM WRITING TO MY MP"

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind all that twaddle

We really need the electric shock collar button to be applied to all those in government who somehow think they (1) deserve to be there, (2) are better than the proles, (3) think it's a lifetime luxury position.

[Tim Parker]

Platinum comment card

..will there be a higher class of comment subscription than 'Premium' ?

For instance, one that even allows the subscriber to add comments to an Andrew Orlowski article ?..

[John G Imrie]

Re: Andrew Orlowski

If there is such an option I doubt I'll ever be able to afford it.

[il-monstro]

iRegister

Iam buying commentsonline from iRegister.co.uk cause i have never seen a wonderful store like iRegister

[Peter Gathercole]

I sincerely hope...

... that this is another April Fools story.

Do you really believe that paying to post comments is actually something that the majority of commentards will actually do? It's just a bit of light relief, and the ability to see whether other people are of like mind.

Next you will be saying that BOFH will be only available to subscription holders.

Hang on. This over 250 words yet is it?

[steve 44]

look at the icon

then look at the last comment i made.

I think she might be smarter than me..............

[Ihre Papiere Bitte!!]

Zapping? Hmm, not sure...

What happens if you get "zapped" by 3 people, getting your account deleted, if you've paid your year's subscription? Especially if this is because you've said something quite reasonable like "I believe that Google is invading privacy and retaining too much data"? How would a comment like that be grounds for account deletion?

I can imagine that the account numbers will plummet after a contentious topic. Look at the histrionics on any article about smoking, for example. I think my account would have been banned 20 times over if left to fellow commentards on the last one alone!

I can see that this could be a good function, but I think it might need some oversight* to prevent abuse and could end up being a race between pro / anti (topic) to try and silence the opposition. It could well lead to any but premium commenters becoming over-cautious in an attempt not to be deleted, or just to cease commenting altogether (in which case, they'd wonder why they're paying their fiver, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't be the intent!)

Or maybe I'm just a bit too cynical?

(*e.g. you can't zap more than x accounts in y period, accounts zapped three times are subject to moderator review rather than simply deleted, accounts that zap too frequently are themselves reviewed by moderators, accounts are monitored to see if they're shills for particular interests)

On the other hand, I value El Reg enough that I would happily shell out £12/year (£1 a month for this sort of goodness? Here's my card...) in order to fully participate, and I'm quite excited (not like that, you filthy beasts!) to see what's coming in the future.

[Ihre Papiere Bitte!!]

Oops

<-Mine's the one with £12 in the pocket marked "El Reg Fund".

I'm starting to think that maybe I'd had just enough coffee to think about things too much, and not enough to spot the date...

Meh, in case this ever does go under consideration, my comments above stand.

[TeeCee]

Oh dear.

".......if you're not happy, we'll do our best to remedy matters....."

I'm afraid that bit gave it away rather early doors for me. I just couldn't for the life of me figure out why the f*** you'd go straight to that position from "suck it up, arsehats" without at least experimenting with just stuffing your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala" whenever we complained.

I like the very wide comments section though and it should stop those pesky formatting snafus whenever anyone posts a long url or title, keep it up!

[Annihilator]

Almost, ALMOST

I only nibbled at the worm and managed to just fall short of swallowing the hook... I even clicked the link to the call for commentards article...

But in keeping with the above, "I'm outraged, how dare you! I will have no choice to move to the Daily Mail's comment pages instead as they remain free, just like Britain should be - free for Brits, and free of foreigners!"