Articles with no comments

This topic was created by Kubla Cant .

[Kubla Cant]

Articles with no comments

Over the past week or so there seems to have been a marked increase in the number of articles that have no attached comments. Instead, they conclude with a wheedling plea to comment in the forums section.

I enjoy reading and contributing to Reg comments sections, but frankly not enough to follow a link to the forum home page, then search for comments on an article I've just read. To judge from the dearth of article-specific matter in the forums, this is true of most Reg readers.

Why is this happening? Do you have an agreement with your more lily-livered authors that ensures they won't be exposed to the mordant postings of commentards?

[h4rm0ny]

Re: Articles with no comments

Agreed. This is annoying. How am I supposed to find the thread for the Trident article for example. There seems no obvious category and no way of knowing what thread people are discussing it in. Give us proper comments. I like to read what people have written without following a series of clues. And sometimes I like people to read what I have written without having to do the same.

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: Articles with no comments

I totally agree, see my comment, this is the perfect case in point, that Trident article.

Lewis Page, the author clearly lacks the balls to even admit he is way too much of a wuss to face criticism and uses this utterly pathetic excuse of linking to the START PAGE OF THE FORUM (not to a thread about an article!)

[Levente Szileszky]

Re: Articles with no comments

I agree but I go further: I take it as a pretty pathetic admission of being unable to deal with direct criticism on the writer part.

Direct refusal to provide any feedback, it is nothing else - and telling people to go to the forum WITHOUT LINKING TO AN ATRTICLE-SPECIFIC THREAD is just really-really PATHETIC, it shows the writer does not have the balls even to take responsibility for his feedback-refusing decision.

Truly pathetic, indeed.

[Graham Marsden]

It seems...

... that Lewis Page is having an attack of the Orlowskis who used to be notorious for getting El Reg to publish his opinion pieces but refusing to let anyone comment on them (or moderating and even editing the comments himself!)

[Dodgy Geezer]

I'm complately lost!

Where is that place to comment on Lewis's Trident Article?

[BigAndos]

Maybe they're just experimenting to try and get the forum more active? Marketing types are big on "communities" these days after all...

[Graham Marsden]

Oh look...

.... another Lewis Page Opinion Piece (this time about energy bills) with no opportunity for us to post comments.

One could almost get the feeling that he doesn't like his opinions being questioned...

[Captain Underpants]

Re: Oh look...

@Graham Marsden:

Lewis Page? The chap who has at least once written an article he claimed was supported by a scientific paper that explicitly contradicted what he was saying? Surely not!

As far as the more general thread goes: I agree. If Vulture Central wants us using the forums, make 'em worthwhile and relevant - ie set up an automated bridge between the "comment" link at the foot of the article and a new thread, created automatically on the forum, which contains either the entire article or at least the first two paragraphs and a link to it on the main site. Make it as easy to comment on the forum as it currently is on the front page. And don't use restricting an existing facility as an "incentive", because all you do is irritate people by foisting something they can't be arsed with for no obvious reason.

[Daniel B.]

Re: Oh look...

Fun fact: the comments section in the articles are already a thread in the forums, according to how the system treats comments.

Nah, I guess it is just Lewis going through an Orlowski phase. I do like some of his articles, though...

[Captain Underpants]

Re: Oh look...

@Daniel

I find that Lewis writing about military hardware is a fascinating and knowledgable (at least as far as I can tell) individual with interesting insights to share.

Lewis writing about anything relating to energy or climate, however, appears to be an anti-green evangelist looking for any excuse, no matter how contrived or factually inaccurate, to try and smack everyone even remotely connected to green initiatives. He's clearly passionate about the issue and has his own opinions, but he's so far away from objectivity on the subject that it really is hard to find any reason to read his articles a lot of the time, especially when he's misinterpreting scientific publications...

But yeah, an Orlowski phase sounds about right. Which is a shame, Orlowski with comments on and the right topic can produce some great articles and discussions, but Orlowski with comments off tends to be clickbait and/or effectively trolling his own audience.

[diodesign]

Re: Oh look...

Honestly, I shouldn't be commenting this late after a few jars, but there's no conspiracy here. It's an experiment to see what happens if we punt comments directly into the forums. I don't get the logic of complaining that we haven't created a specific forum topic for you: why not create one yourself? It's allowed! That's why the discussion forums are here. For people to lead the debate rather than get bogged down in meta-debate. Anyway. All IMHO.

C.

[Anomalous Cowturd]

@diodesign

When you've sobered up, read what Mr. Underpants wrote above, then do what he suggests.

HTH HANN.

My turn. :) >>>>>>>>>>>>

P.S. Can I come off the naughty step now please?

I promise to try not to troll Andrew again! :o)

[Graham Marsden]

@diodesign - Re: Oh look...

"It's an experiment to see what happens if we punt comments directly into the forums."

And it appears to have comprehensively failed.

All it does is put barriers in the way of anyone who wants to comment on one of Lewis' pieces because instead of just clicking "comment", you've got to go to the forums, find if there is a thread already and, if there isn't, *then* start one.

It's a well known fact of web design that if you want people to access your content, you *don't* force them to drill down levels to find it, because most people will not bother.

Why do you think it's different for El Reg?

[Vimes]

Re: Oh look... @diodesign

Just a thought, but perhaps you could try something a little more radical and try out a completely different forum like beehiveforum? Or perhaps rewrite your forum to look more like it?

There are plenty of niggles with the forum here, one of the main ones for me being that the most recent thread for any one of the topics shows the title of the latest post within a thread rather than the title of the thread itself when displaying the list of topics. From my perspective this is of little use since I still have to view the topic anyway to see which one has been posted in.

Using something like beehiveforum, or even PHPbb, would get rid of most of those issues in a single go.

One last thing: if you want to get people to post in the forums perhaps it would be better to extend member benefits to all members rather than limit them by badge? Limiting editing facilities or the ability to post HTML can only put people off from bothering to try in the first place.

All just IM(NS)HO...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re: Oh look... @diodesign

Are you talking about the most recent thread showing here http://forums.theregister.co.uk/ (in the latest topic column)?

If you click on the name of the individual forum (e.g. El Reg Matters) on the left hand side of the forum front page you get to here - and there you can see http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2013/07/17/Kubla_Cant_Articles_with_no_comments/.

This is presented in chronological order unless you are signed in - enabling you to read by thread or by newest first.

So, I am guessing that I am missing your point ... I am sometimes a little slow. So please spell it out for me what we are doing wrong here.

Also, yes it is time to open up editing tools to everyone.

Chrz,

Drew

[Graham Marsden]

@Drewc - Re: Oh look... @diodesign

Oddly, I've just looked at the Latest Topic column and I can't see it there. Possibly because someone has created *another* topic which is even newer.

And why should I have to look at an individual forum to try to find a topic instead of just clicking on a "Enter your comment" box at the bottom of the article I'm reading?

I guess you are missing my point (or being deliberately obtuse), so let me spell it out for you as you request:

El Reg is deliberately putting barriers in people's way, making it difficult for them to comment on articles for no good reason other than, it seems to try to force them to use the forums instead of the regular comments.

Why this should be necessary when the current system has been working perfectly well , I don't know. Perhaps you can spell it out for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @Drewc - Re: Oh look... @diodesign

Graham,

The commenter I was replying to was not referring to the barriers to commenting on articles, as you put it - unless I am completely mistaken.

As for this experiment by the newsdesk ... this has not been a success IMO.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: @Drewc - Oh look... @diodesign

Drew,

I agree with you. I don't think this has been a success.

To be brutally honest, I don't think your non-article forums have been much of a success either. You get the odd 100 post thread, but I suspect most of those are linked to/from articles. Or have been going over months, like the wishlist/bugs ones for example.

It's a bit of a vicious circle. You post something, get no reply for a while, then stop bothering to look back, so when your reply turns up, 3 days later, you don't even notice.

I don't know what the cause of that is, although I could hazard a few guesses. Personally I think it's the unwieldy forums you use, which make it harder to follow conversations, and hard to see whether/when you've had a reply. It may also be down to the users only wanting to comment on articles, and not have discussions, but I do think there's a subset of your commentards who would post on non-article forums regularly.

I presume this was an experiment to try and drive more users to the forums, given that you've tried before by having a link from an article to a discussion thread, but that's not then attracted people to other threads.

I must say though, although your staff do make an appearance on them, it's pretty rare. And when people ask questions about badges for example in the Reg Matters boards, you guys don't often come along to answer. So even replies from you guys can take days/weeks. Then you'll do several at once. So if you're not even checking out your own forums all that regularly, why would you be surprised if your users aren't?

I know what a pain in the arse this can be. My company have just appointed me chief-spokesman on Twitter, to try and build up our Google ranking via social-bollocks, and maybe get some marketing value out of it. I'm sceptical, though I can see ways that we could use Twitter and Linked-in. But I can also see that it's going to be at least half an hour a day's work for me, to get any value out of it for us.

You could probably read all the posts to the non-article forums for one day in ten minutes at the moment...

Anyway, well done for coming on here and admitting it hadn't worked. It must be annoying when people post as if they have some sort of God-given human right to spout their opinions on every article, and it must be some sort of conspiracy or major character flaw on the part of the author if they are denied. I hope when I criticise El Reg, that I'm a bit more constructive than that. And hopefully a bit less up my own arse as well... Keep up the good work!

Toodle-pip.

P.S. - Please put an article on the front page about the Ashes, even if only to annoy your Aussie office, when they wake up.

[diodesign]

Re: I ain't Spartacus

"I don't think this has been a success"

Depends how you define success.

"So if you're not even checking out your own forums all that regularly, why would you be surprised if your users aren't?"

We do read the forums, but I think the boss would prefer us to be writing articles and headlines during the day than chatting away on the forums :-)

C.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re the Ashes

No need to write this up. The humiliation of Simon Sharwood, our Aus editor, was complete enough. Don't know if Richard Chirgwin cared though.

Drew

PS thanks for the feedback - clearly, forums need a bit of loving.

[Graham Marsden]

Re: @Drewc - Oh look... @diodesign

DrewC - I agree the experiment has not been a success.

Still, at least now El Reg is letting us comment on the important articles by Lester such as the one on low-slung trousers...

[TeeCee]

Re: @Drewc - Oh look... @diodesign

I think the lack of success here is down to implementation.

In the past, I've seen it done where the author starts a forum topic and links the "have a bleat in the forums" bit to that. That works.

Just linking to the main forum page and starting a free-for-all doesn't.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: @Drewc - Oh look... @diodesign

TeeCee,

The problem with that though, is that the wannabe commentard clicks on the link in the article to the thread on the forums, and comments away. But there's nothing to take them further into the other user forums. So all they've done is to create an article-linked thread, not directly linked to an article. Which doesn't take things any further really.

[Vimes]

@I ain't Spartacus

But there's nothing to take them further into the other user forums

Which is why I think the following type of layout would be better:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7cbpeEHptiY/ULT-nwjbPmI/AAAAAAAAB6Y/viewGVwCpLQ/s1600/forum.gif

Even if a thread is created for a given article the user would still see the other topics and unread threads within the forum and may even decide to post there.

[TeeCee]

Re: @Drewc - Oh look... @diodesign

Which doesn't take things any further really.

Well it does integrate the two areas into one, while preserving the permalink to the relevant comment thread in the original article.

From a user perspective it probably makes little odds but I'd have thought there'd be some technical advantages, if purely from a "KISS engineering" perspective.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re: @Drewc - Oh look... @diodesign

Nail on the head, TeeCee.

[Vimes]

Re: Oh look... @diodesign

Are you talking about the most recent thread showing here http://forums.theregister.co.uk/ (in the latest topic column)?

I am, yes.

For this folder the latest topic text read 'Re: @Drewc - Oh look... @diodesign' for the post in this thread. IMO this should be the thread title which in this case would be 'Articles with no comments' (and then possibly whatever subject the user has chosen to use). What is presently being shown could potentially be associated with any thread and ideally - IMO - I should not have to enter a topic just to find out which thread has been updated.

All just my opinion of course, but I still get the impression that these forums are unwieldy to use. Unless you make some changes that are rather more fundamental than just stopping comments then you are going to find it difficult encouraging people to post here I think.

Incidentally what triggers the need for me to log back in? I seem to have to do so at what seem like random intervals.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re: Oh look... @diodesign

OK Vimes, thanks for your feedback. We will put your ideas into the mix when considering our next round of forum upgrades.

btw we did use a Beehive-like forum software - its predecessor - for our first go at forums in the late 90s.

[Vimes]

Re: Oh look... @diodesign @DrewC

btw we did use a Beehive-like forum software - its predecessor - for our first go at forums in the late 90s.

Purely out of curiosity: why did you move away from it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re: Oh look... @diodesign @DrewC

Our first user forum split in two when Mike Magee left to found The Inquirer. Most - we are talking about a few dozen - went with Mike - who was the main personality on the forum - the software was from Delphi.

The volunteer moderator "Hermit" stayed with both forums - but ours got battered by a paranoid schizophrenic. This was very tiresome - when Hermit died in 2001, we shut down the forum.

We introduced comments to some stories in 2007 - and to all, or almost all, comments in 2008 or 2009.

BTW The Inquirer forums lives on as Hermit's Cave, although it is not part of the Inq anymore, and it does not appear to be very active. It does use Beehive, though...

[Daniel B.]

@DrewC

Hey, I actually like what El Reg uses for forum/commenting software. Definitely cleaner than the wretched hive that many "forums" use (I'm looking at you, CommunityServer!) and it has a unique feel to it. Maybe some linkage from related articles to related threads might help the forum usage? And probably adding some kind of tracking on "someone replied/commented on a thread I'm following"? I haven't used the forums much (besides article comments, that is) so I haven't really seen if these are actually implemented and I just haven't checked them out, though.

[Vimes]

Re: Oh look... @diodesign

One more thing that I've noticed: when you post in a thread and somebody replies to that post then there is no visible sign that this has happened unless you actually read it. This presumably makes having any sort of conversation less likely since people will post a message and then just forget about the thread and not bother to check for replies. I would assume that they would be less likely to ignore additional messages if they were being told that responses to their posts had been received.

Perhaps in the right hand side of the page where you have the 'forums' and 'your topics' tabs you could have an additional section within the 'forums' tab that has something like 'unread replies' and links to the threads that have been updated?

And since there can be a number of replies between what has been posted and what it was replying to, would it not be possible to also add an 'in reply to' line to the header of each reply and a hyperlink to the post that prompted the reply?

[Martin Budden]

Yay!

"(Don't worry, normal comments policy will be restored in the near future.)"

As seen at the bottom of the Iberian Lynx article.

[Anonymous Coward]

serisously retrograde

I'm a El Reg regular reader and I have never attempted to find the Comments to an article in a forum thread - not that bothered to go ferreting around to be frank.

What I will say is that imo your Comments sections are at least as interesting and amusing as your articles. By effectively removing the Comments (which is what I think you have done) your will render your site at least half as interesting as it was. Seriously. And consequently, I will without hesitation stop visiting El Reg.

I'm sure its an initiative to drive more clicks/readers/etc. but it may be extremely counter productive. If you must do this, why not create the forum thread yourself and put a link to it at the end of the article? Simples.

[andre 2]

Re. comments

Yes, I agree Comments add character to the site.

By all means if it needed a muppet filter (tm) add one, but not just stop it entirely.

That would be unhelpful IMHO.

-A

[Nasty Nick]

Why are no comments allowed on Rhino Incest...?

You know nearly all the articles getting loaded up allow comments, even the recent ones (look at today's main El Reg home for example).

Is it just a totally random decision and you fellas make it up as you go along? Mind you, why shouldn't El Reg staffers do just that, it's your site. Anyhow, you don't have to be Sherlock to notice that the "No Comment" articles are mostly by Lewis, so I've done my own survey of his recent articles and the comment/no comment pattern looks like this:

Last 10 articles for each category:

Non-Global Warming

Articles which really don't have any obvious connection with global warming,tree huggers, nuclear power or any of that kind of shite.

Comments - 9 No comments - 1 (any idea as to why comments aren't allowed on rhino incest?)

Global Warming

Articles which really do have an obvious connection with global warming,tree huggers, nuclear power or any of that kind of shite.

Comments - 0 No Comments - 10.

Is this a rule? Can someone code for this please? Something like:

IF Article contains "global*" OR "warm*" OR "CO2" OR "glacier*" OR "sea level" OR "Rhino Incest" THEN Article.Thread=True

Else

Article.Comment=True

END IF

OR something.

Lewis is quite able to handle the shitty comments (the freedom to make / read shitty comments is half the reason for coming to El Reg after all), and it must make for great stats. Or is it that there is too much traffic generated by the pro & anti-global warming comment trolls?

[Anonymous Coward]

where are the comments?

No comments on some articles? I was looking forward to reading commentard's contributions to this...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/07/compromising_photos/

But no.

The comments hugely contribute to the whole El Reg experience and USP. Without them, it's just another tech journal.

[diodesign]

Re: where are the comments?

"No comments on some articles?"

Yes, sometimes we'll switch off comments or put them into the moderation queue. Usually for legal reasons.

"I was looking forward to reading commentards' contributions"

There are all sorts of buttons and controls on our articles: in this case, a little finger trouble caused comments to be accidentally switched off on that article. We'll try to restore them.

As always, go for cock-up over conspiracy. Even though everyone loves a conspiracy.

C.