Comments for The Ultimate Commenting Experience

The Ultimate Commenting Experience

2006-04-28T01:26:50Z

I have this theory about a radical improvement in user experience that could be made for any website that allows comments to be submitted by readers. Especially if any of those readers are male. I'd like to share this idea with you.

You see, I know a lot of people that make community applications or blogging tools; I even get to work with some of the best in the business. I'm sure they do fancy things like eye-tracking and usability tests and armies of robots analyzing comment forms. But there's still one behavior that's eluded them, even after years of experience.

Based on extensive observation in the nearly 7 years that I've been blogging, here is how men actually submit comments to a site:

Skim just enough of the first few sentences so you can get a fair idea what the topic of a post or news item is.
Scroll quickly, as fast as you can! Be careful not to accidentally read any of the other comments on the page on the way down. (Some of them may contain the information you're about to post.)
Type out whatever opinion you've had on this topic your entire life. Don't waste time with spelling or punctuation, and be careful not to let any new information on the page influence your thoughts.
Now that you've completed your task, submit your comment and then, at your leisure, review the other content on the page. If you find that the original post or any of the comments that preceded yours were written by people who share your opinion, bask in the confirmation that you were right.

Now the time has clearly come for modern Web 2.0 applications to reflect this reality. Where is all the innovation around accommodating this unquenchable need? We men need to inflict our comments on the web with wanton disregard for the context, content, and community in which we're participating. Let's get some Ajax on this motherfucker, stat!

Comment from Anonymopus on 2006-04-27

2006-04-28T02:30:47Z

What doe u have against mailes? Are u some kine of a biget?

Comment from Achanak on 2006-04-27

2006-04-28T03:10:02Z

You are right - radical theories on improvment of male website readers need to be developed using Ajax.

Comment from Kathryn Yu on 2006-04-27

2006-04-28T03:29:27Z

I might add for point 3: When posting, especially don't do any preliminary fact-checking or Google searching for facts and figures you're stating. Going off of your memory and mis-stating is always fine.

And don't waste time with fixing grammatical errors.

Comment from Scott Johnson on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T04:33:12Z

And never, under any circumstances, click the "Preview" button.

Comment from Simran on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T06:43:56Z

I agree, this is exactly what I do, except that I care about spelling and punctuation.

Comment from ksdavies on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T09:28:38Z

Hello, my name is Kathy and I am a commentor. I vow to hold my comments henceforth unless they actually add to the conversation.

Except for this one. Thank you.

Comment from Bob Aman on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T09:31:11Z

Eeep, don't encourage it!

Comment from Diane Ensey on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T09:39:14Z

You only see this with men, Anil? I think women are just as guilty. Maybe your blog just attracts more thoughtful women!

Comment from Colleen on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T09:57:22Z

I would say, for the sake of argument, that men and women are both interested in connections and validation. However, women do so by stating their opinion in a way they hope will ring true with others. Men, I think, want to be right, as to impress others. Women go mind + heart, men go mind + mind... maybe.

And to prove this, I just sat here carefully wording this comment, in hopes that someone will agree with me :P

It also makes me think of all the random comments to my blog, from men, that basically say "This blog is stupid!" without really understanding that it's a personal blog and the goal really isn't dishing out the hard-htting news stories. I get much nicer, more conversational comments from women, for the most part.

Comment from l.m.orchard on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T11:31:57Z

FIRST POST!!!1!!1!1

Comment from Clint Pidlubny on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T11:34:21Z

It was tempting to repeat what someone said above, but that's too obvious.

How about a timebased comment system? Maybe it could scan the content of the post and comments and generate a word count. Then divide that number by an average screen reading speed of say 200 words per minute to get the number of minutes before making comments available. It's important to set a cookie so that the next time a visitor comes to the page, they can comment right away.

It would be easy to get the word count when submitting the post. Then the count could be increased with each comment submission. I look forward to seeing how you implement this Anil. ;-)

Clint

Comment from mathew on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T11:39:27Z

i'll plead guilty to scrolling past other people's comments (i did, just now) only in two situations: when i'm offering my personal opinion on a post that i read (who cares if someone else has the same opinion? now you have at least 2 like minds) and when there are several hundred comments.

if i come to the site for the author, let's say heather armstrong, and go to comment on an entry that already has 560 other comments, it wouldn't be feasible to read all those comments; the comment sections are usually for the author unless they have requested for a subject to be discussed in the comments. at least that's how i view it.

that being said, if there's less than 100 comments i usually read them.

Comment from dav on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T12:27:17Z

obviously standards must be developed adn adhered to in order to improve the disjointed tracking of of the non primary (secondary tertiary etc) conversation graph. i'm amazed we've suffered through this primitive system so long already. we need multi-directional acyclic graph mechanisms that span trackbacks AND comments. wake up people!

Comment from dav on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T12:28:28Z

Comment from Matt on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T14:49:32Z

And never click the "Preview" button. And don't waste time with fixing grammatical errors.

Comment from Wyatt on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T14:58:00Z

OMG I love the comment experience!!! It's like that bestest thing ever.

What's your post about?

Comment from Shawn on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T15:22:47Z

Am I missing a joke or something? 'Cause if you're going to make a blanket statement about an entire gender you should back it up with more than your "extensive" personal observation. Why not, "here is how ignorant jackasses actually submit comments to a site"? Or even "most people" or "15 year olds" would be slightly less offensive. Why the need to make it about all men everywhere? I just don't understand why when making a decent observation about what is wrong with most comment threads you feel the need to single out men. Cause what you're saying obviously isn't limited to men. And if you somehow have evidence that it is, or tends to be, then you need to explain it. Or was it just flame bait in hopes that the comments for this post would actually prove your point?

Comment from Neil on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T15:28:53Z

And you shouldn't ever click on the "preview" button.

But I agree with not reading the rest of them, that's just a waste of time.

Comment from Adam Rice on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T16:57:39Z

So perhaps the ultimate male-commenting-oriented blog would have the "post a comment" section right after the first paragraph or so of text. Interesting. Perhaps you could change your templates around to try that out.

Comment from whalt on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T17:54:13Z

Some additional rules to consider.

5. It's usually best to start out one's comment by referring to either the poster or another commenter as an "idiot."

6. It's never to soon to get on one's high horse.

7. Point out that the other person or persons is "biased" and has no facts to back up their claim and then proceed to support your own contentions primarily with personal invective. (See rule number 5.)

8. Make general accusations of "political correctness" while in turn demonstrating an incredibly thin skin about any perceived slight to one's own gender, race, class, or political affiliation.

5. Use a signature that attempts to encapsulate your entire world view into an unfunny joke.

Comment from sambeau on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T18:22:07Z

Haha! First Post! w00t!

Comment from nex on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T18:26:07Z

might digg-style moderation improve things? some of the problems seem to be caused by lazyness. reading all those comments is just too much work. but if you have the chance of finding one that basically says what you also wanted to say and you can mod it up with a click, this _saves_ you time and energy. and of course it helps to improve the signal/noise ratio.

i think criticising men is not even wrong. it may be quite true in that sites that, in ward cunningham parlance, HaveThisPattern, are primarily frequented by men, and that this is so because men are more likely to become involved in those communities. however, making this overgeneralisation ignores the acutal causal relationships. stating the problem this way is basically sexist.

Comment from Mike Monteiro on 2006-04-28

2006-04-28T21:09:25Z

C'mon dude. Women don't blog.

Comment from Anonymous on 2006-04-29

2006-04-30T01:40:36Z

What doe u have against mailes? Are u some kine of a biget?

Comment from Ezra Cooper on 2006-04-30

2006-04-30T13:59:16Z

What's up with Anonymous? Some kind of bigot-hating fascist, I guess.

Comment from Anonymous on 2006-04-30

2006-04-30T16:52:55Z

reading all those comments is just too much work: It depends, sometimes it's impossible to read every or most comments. The commenting experience doesn't scale very well, especially on high traffic blogs. I'm more comfortable on forums where you can easily quote, add a link, etc. And comments are divided into pages so you don't have to scroll like mad.

Comment from Kendall Gelner on 2006-04-30

2006-04-30T23:51:35Z

I think you are mostly right even though it was kind of a joke... I have always thought message boards needed a moderation category of "vent" that would leave the post up but seperate it from all thoughtful posts.

Comment from O.G. Poster on 2006-04-30

2006-05-01T01:32:56Z

Frist Post!

Comment from patrick on 2006-05-01

2006-05-01T09:29:08Z

this is *too* true.

you've been dugg.

Comment from Stuart on 2006-05-01

2006-05-01T12:00:56Z

Describes me perfectly : )

Comment from Dan on 2006-05-01

2006-05-01T12:38:59Z

I haven't really had a chance to read any of the comments above yet, but I've been saying this very thing for years.

Comment from Proud Patriot on 2006-05-01

2006-05-01T14:59:47Z

WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA??

Comment from Saint Fnordius on 2006-05-02

2006-05-02T05:31:19Z

It's interesting that a lot of these comments apply only to flat-thread comments systems. Or they're of the "durrr, I'm a bloke and this stereotype is true!" type.

My experience is that quite often the pattern applies best to trolls and astroturfers, but my experience is limited to tech and political blogs. There, most of the blogs I favour have moved to a threaded/moderated system similar to Slashdot and Scoop.

I'm still not sure, even after reading all of the previous commments again. I guess I'll just chalk this up to "Ha Ha Only Serious".

Comment from DirkDigger on 2006-05-02

2006-05-02T13:55:47Z

This is old news! n00bs!!

Oops, I forgot I'm not commenting on Digg.

Comment from Chris on 2006-05-03

2006-05-03T14:53:09Z

Why don't you move this form to the top?

Comment from Jay Allen on 2006-05-06

2006-05-06T08:57:10Z

D00D, I can't believe you haven't approved my comment after a whole week! It was the most important part of your post!

Comment from each note music blog on 2006-05-10

2006-05-10T12:03:58Z

Im male, but this is still very funny and sometimes very true, I made sure to read all the comments this time, but may not have otherwise....

Comment from AC on 2006-05-11

2006-05-11T22:52:05Z

Freedom of Speech is a convenience we like to use when convenient.

Nice Mr Dash. Nice.

Comment from Sebastian on 2006-05-13

2006-05-13T19:15:05Z

It's an interesting article to be publishing do to the shear amount of people that must be doing this exactly. In fact, when I first looked at this blog posting, I almost took the numbered observations AS INSTRUCTIONS. It only became clearer when I realized that it was almost a self reflexive topic, and I was forced to read the entire thing more carefully. Good posting !

Comment from Charles Slavis on 2006-05-22

2006-05-22T12:18:15Z

I agree whith you, but you spelled mother forker wrong.

Comment from Slater on 2006-05-22

2006-05-22T12:26:22Z

You're right, guys are great commentors, I remember this one time when someone told me that I really pay attenion to detail, wow, that was great I thought, well good article about how insightful men are, keep it up!

Comment from Hotty Patty on 2006-05-22

2006-05-22T13:01:33Z

I haven't yet gotten any quickie male comments yet but knowing the blogosphere as i have heard, I am expecting that soon. You don't mention any quick fixes though for Blogspot users.

Comment from Timbolicus on 2006-05-22

2006-05-22T13:14:16Z

Comments are worthless...disregard

Comment from C. on 2006-05-22

2006-05-22T14:50:18Z

You have a theory? I've often debatted this and must speak that after much consediration that you are wrong. I've decided that we can respect only theories formed by the respective consediration of impotant authorities or coellective groups like wikipedia. That some blogger feels he has a notion does a theory not be!

Comment from Daniel on 2006-05-22

2006-05-22T15:56:20Z

feel like I wasted my time reading these comments so far.
doesn't matter if men actually do this or that, if women blog or not...we're just about to forget it all soon.

Comment from Mike on 2006-06-12

2006-06-12T06:39:10Z

So I read all the entire post and all the comments before submitting it, made sure no one posted the same crap and clicked the preview button...

no where's my prize?

Comment from Collin on 2006-06-24

2006-06-24T15:07:07Z

After reading many of the comments I find myself understanding why a 'person' who perhaps is a guy would not want to read through every comment. I feel compelled to respond to many comments but that would eat up a lot of time. Do you feel like a post from a blog should turn into an all day affair or research and opinion sharing?

Just what is the goal of this post? What is the problem caused by a person giving a quick bs quote based on information that was skimmed?

I would think any problem can be solved but I don't really agree that there is a problem.

Comment from Aaron Suggs on 2006-06-27

2006-06-27T22:45:56Z

I think the comment form should be placed between the title of the blog post and the body text. And comments needn't even be displayed. Comments are for telling other people stuff...not being told stuff.

Maybe somebody else suggested this above...I didn't have time to read it. But I do have time to post asanine comments.