Bbs = BS; Quality of discussion plummets

@kbert there are 2 points here that have been discussed heavily:

Lack of threading

Distance of the comments from the main article


I think its only fair to expect you try out the shoes before you declare they do not fit.

I see you have a very vested interest in this format…
I’m spending this time painstakingly sharing my dismay with this because I’ve been “trying out these shoes” since the change. Not only do the “shoes not fit”, I can’t begin to get my foot into one of the pair, and the other has raised blisters and aggravated my bunions!
'timquinn’s observations are valid and go to the heart of what’s at stake, here; if “my fellow community members” really want this, so be it. The internet’s become poorer for it, sadly.

OK, my sense of that was out of date I appreciate your correction.

I note we’re not even getting the “curated view” :confused: of comments on the main page any more. Stay in your box, mutant.
I’m mostly on my phone these days, so don’t get much chance to come here. As you can imagine.

i found Disqus to be much more buggy and really hard to navigate; re-visiting threads i’d been in was not easy. i’d get logged-out at random, even while using it. their UI was not as intuitive; i stumbled upon features accidentally over months and even a year later. the transition from Movable Type to Disqus was “guess what? here’s a new thing, good luck!” but with the switch to BBS, we got a day’s heads-up and Sam and Codinghorror were here all the time to teach us and field ideas and bug reports, which they even solicited. ever tried to ask something or point out bugs to Disqus? bupkis is all i ever got.
@bbtimquinn is right that the permalink needs to have the discussion on it. i had not attributed any ulterior motives to this, but his is a better explanation than the official one (which there wasn’t one, that I saw.) as superior as BBS/Discourse is to Disqus, i feel that not having the comments on the permalink is responsible for the markedly less comment traffic that we’ve all noticed.

4 Likes

Please do continue to open meta topics to discuss things like this, though perhaps a bit more constructively than “new thing bad!” next time…

Errors in the plugin to bridge BB and BBS, or occasional human error… I thought we had nailed down most of those, if you see another one, post it in the Articles with closed comments topic.

We’ll be working more on mobile views in August.

1 Like

The permalink shouldn’t matter anyway since there’s a direct link on the mainpage to each post’s BBS topic page. the problem as i see it is 1. people aren’t used to using BB this way. they click the headline to the permalink and get frustrated by the extra click to comment, leading to 2. a lot of the community don’t seem to be adopting BBS. there are many names that i used to see daily that i don’t see anymore. sure, a few probably use a new login, but couldn’t be all of them. overall posting seems to be down. maybe a periodic post to advertise the bubble links on the main page? i dunno if that would really help. Discourse itself seems to be hugely divisive, though i’m of the camp that views it as a step forward.

1 Like

“The quality of the discussions seems to be decreasing” <> “new thing bad”.

(Although, apologies, but Discourse is pretty bad. And I like flat discussion systems…)

Antinous and Felton have disappeared.

3 Likes

You’d definitely expect to see lower commenting rates, since

  • Disqus shares cookies across the entire Internet and therefore, you are more likely to be logged in to a random site that uses Disqus. BBS accounts are unique to BBS.
  • BBS, by design, is a “different wing of the mansion” and requires clicking through to enter that wing and participate. Disqus is on-page.
  • The new BBS site requires people to register at least once, in the same way that the first time you encounter Disqus, you have to log in there at least once.

Other than lower volume, which is to be expected, and arguably by design, I can’t agree that the quality of the discussions is decreasing. Can you, or the original topic author, provide some specific examples of where you think it is?

The way this is panning out for me (and I like discourse, have no beef with it).

  1. I feel less inclined to go to BB now that it is sans comments.

  2. BBS is ‘sans article’, so it’s difficult to gauge what I might be interested in going only by title and comment numbers.

  3. I’m reading less BB and seeing what feels like a lower level of commenting.

Basically I’m just increasingly getting weaned off BB. Guess that’s a time sink out of my day, so, er, yay, I guess.

I know that any request to have comments and articles in one place will result in further accusations of entitlement but with them split I don’t find either part as compelling as I did. And to be honest, I don’t feel as welcome.

10 Likes

The mix of comments has changed dramatically, it’s perhaps not as focused (or at least, I don’t find those focused call/response lines anymore). Brousing around I get a sense that more “shy” people are commenting, some slightly random stuff. Not too much hurly-burly “you say what!?!” going on.

The sense of a public arena is missing. Passing strangers who’ve come to an article can’t like a comment. You can’t tell how many people have read it, nor their response to it. The sense that “oh ho! XYZ is going to disagree with that!” has gone somewhat.

BBS is a nice interface, although I’d love to have a better way to follow a strand. That allowed the development and evolution of ideas and invigorating discussion.

I do visit less. BB itself, the guys, they’re still posting interesting stuff. They’re a part of my life. But the acute excitement, the waiting with baited breath for an NSA comment battle … mmm.

Times change. I am more focused at work though.

3 Likes

“…random ‘voicings’…”

“It’s perhaps not as focused… the sense of a public arena is missing… I’d love to have a better way to follow…”

What I loved about the discussions we used to have is that the original topic was so often expanded upon. (Im)Pertinent links led me to stuff I’d never imagined; the combined knowledge and experience of the community (those who took the time and effort to be members) was near the top of internet awesomeness. I haven’t seen anything close to what I’m referring to since this change, the quality of discussion is bland, randomish, unfocussed tripe compared, imho.

1 Like

Yeah, for me it’s like having a topic in the main room, and having to go down to the end of the hall to write on the chalkboard before coming back again. That said, I don’t mind it much.

However, people seem to care less about what I say/write than they used to, and I can’t tell if it’s because they don’t like what I have to say, or that they don’t like having to go down the hall to look at the chalkboard.

7 Likes

You lost me. You’re either a data aggregator emphasising previous points, or mocking - I can’t tell. Please be clear.

2 Likes

I have to say, I am just not seeing that. One recent example that comes to mind, this discussion of Krull is plenty awesome in my opinion!

I do read every post on BBS (I skim a lot of them, to be fair) and I’ve seen many topics that added significantly to the BB post they were attached to, containing fascinating addendums, observations, and related conversation.

BBS is a substantial change, yes, and as with any substantial change, it will not be to everyone’s taste. But the BB community is very high quality and I believe it is already adapting and embracing this new wing of the mansion – which is still partially under construction!

I’m still here.

4 Likes

Yeah I’m still quite miffed about the accusations of entitlement and the subtle hints that they don’t like us - the internet hoi polloi - sullying their self-promotion-career platform BB with our comments.

2 Likes

Hi!

2 Likes