Blog Administrative Stuff
I added a plugin that allows rating of comments. I kind of liked that feature on my old blog, and have been missing it here. This one is a little different.
Comments that everybody really, really likes get highlighted. So, if you’re scrolling through long comment threads, anything that pops out is a good one.
Comments that everybody really, really hates get shortened up. There’s a little message that says something about how much everybody hates this comment, and you have to click a button to see the comment. I don’t often have big issues with mean trolls, but I do have issues with concern trolls and educate me trolls, and not everybody wants to see that shit.
There’s also a feature that highlights comments over which there is a lot of disagreement. I set the requirement for that comment so high that it will probably never show up, because that’s not a feature that interests me very much. I want to highlight the good more than I want to highlight anything else.
I don’t know quite how to scale the system — I don’t know how many votes comments will get, and what’s a fair bar to set for a good or bad comment. Good comments are currently set at 20 good votes, and bad comments at 10.
Let me know if this is not a helpful feature, or is obnoxious, or anything.
Comments are closed.
Nice feature. With very popular blogs like yours that get a lot of comments, some of which are interesting and useful and some of which are just “me too” or actively obnoxious, I really appreciate being able to skim through and be able to find the best ones. At the moment, I admit that on your more popular posts I’m scrolling down to find your comments and then backtracking to catch up when your comments are @ a prior commenter’s.
I’ve never seen a feature for rating a comment for the amount of disagreement it generates. Looking at existing comments on your blog, I only see the “Like” or “Dislike” options. Can you explain how that “controversial comment” feature works, or link to an explanation or to a blog where it’s in play? I’m not sure it’s a particularly useful feature for a blog like this, but I could see it having more possibilities on a highly debate-oriented blog (e.g. one about law or economics).
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@PG: Don’t know of any other blogs that have this. From what I understand, the “controversial comment” feature highlights comments that have a certain number of Likes and Dislikes. Like, if your comment had 10 likes and 10 dislikes, it might show up in a different color to flag it as a comment that everybody is disagreeing about. I didn’t think that would be useful on this board — I’ve seen comments everybody likes and comments everybody hates, but I don’t know if I’ve seen a comment that everybody is split on. I can see how this would be a useful feature on other boards with different subject material, but it just doesn’t seem to fit here. Still, if I start seeing comments with a lot of Like and Dislike on them, I’ll think about reactivating that feature.
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@PG: Prostitution seems to be a topic that feminists usually disagree on. Of course, I don’t think this topic has ever been covered in this blog, but I just thought I’d give an example of something that might have a lot of dissenting between its comments.
: Can anybody vote on posts? Or is there a system to delete the votes from random scumbag trolls (just in case a whole bunch of them swamp this blog on a bad day)? If not, then one way to deal with them is by only counting the votes from people who have registered on the forums and have been rated as “trust-worthy” by the moderators or by other “trust-worthy” members. The requirement for this could be somewhat low, such as posting some words of encouragement or a “thank you for sharing your story” note. I guess this is a lot of work for questionable results.
Speaking of ignoring scumbags, can you deny access to people from certain IP or e-mail addresses from reading your blog? I know other websites are able to do this and I was just wondering if you’ve considered doing this.
Oh, and on the topic of stuff that we like, I was wondering if you could bold, underline or somehow highlight the name of a blog that has been recently added to your blogroll. And this highlight would only last for about 1-3 weeks (or whatever you think is appropriate). I’m just mentioning this because I think you added some new blogs there but I didn’t notice them because I looked up all those other blogs when Fugitivus was new to me and have never even glimpsed, at that part of your website, since then XD Of course, it would be even better if you could mention these newly added blogs in a new post but I understand if you don’t have the time for that or whatever other reason. Anyway,this is just something to think about.
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: Anybody can vote on posts, but it’s tracked by IP addresses, to reduce double-votes.
Next time I change my links, I’ll make a post update.
As for the rest of the stuff, I gots no technical skills. These are all pre-made widgets that I download, and I just try to find the ones with features closest to what I want. No idea how to modify them.
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Harriet, I’m glad to see this feature, since I do way more listening than commenting but I often find myself tempted to say “YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES” to some of the more insightful comments. “Like” doesn’t quite carry the same rhetorical force, but I’ll take it.
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