Bbs = BS; Quality of discussion plummets

[peregrinus_bis]

Aha. Thanks. Yes, I agree. Particularly with your bastion point.

[Ignatius]

I actually like the separation of comment system from articles for reasons. Comment sections stress me out and the temptation to read them even when I know in a particular case that I shouldn’t … well, it can be a little too much. Now it’s one click further and I venture in less often. Making me happier.

On the other hand, the comments do feel more hostile now that we’ve moved to BBs. Don’t know if that’s coincidence, because Antinous left, because people are angry about BBs, because there are greater misunderstandings in a flat comment system, or due to some other things I haven’t considered. Or even just my perception as someone with social anxiety who doesn’t like change.

I guess we’ll see how it goes.

[suavefucker]

Tell ya what. It’s Saturday. Let’s all sleep on it.

[peregrinus_bis]

It’s 2am in London and I can’t sleep.

[suavefucker]

Err, isn’t last call 4AM in London? Pansy.

[peregrinus_bis]

Who said I wasn’t out? I’m in a club with a pumping sound system, gyrating bodies all around, DJ droppin’ my trax. Enough booze in me to fell a giant. Barely see the keys on my prototype smartphone (you might get one in a year). Yeah - it’s happenin’m right here.

[suavefucker]

Droppin’ wax. Dare you to say that enough times.

[peregrinus_bis]

Love it. I’m not really out. Have to be up with the kids in the am!

[chgoliz]

Sorry to hear that. Any forwarding links, to a personal blog, say?

[suavefucker]

@Ignatius

Comment sections stress me out and the temptation to read them even when I know in a particular case that I shouldn’t … well, it can be a little too much. Now it’s one click further and I venture in less often. Making me happier.

Mind officially boggled.

[kbert]

I can certainly understand this from a journalist / blogger. I’d get tired of comments all focussed on responding to my experiences or opinions.
Isn’t BB still basically a ‘zine? Big difference!
We have a crew celebrating wonder-ful ‘things’, tangible and not so… slipping occasionally with ‘greasy peccadilloes’ (love ya’ Antinous!); sure, opinions are voiced, sometimes stridently, but is BB anything like a blog?

[Ignatius]

@suavefucker

Mind officially boggled.

How so? I think nearly everyone has something in their life which they know is bad for them but they keep doing anyway.

Or is it something else?

[teufelsdrockh]

It’s pretty plain to anyone that the number of comments has gone way down. Why should that matter to bb?

Here’s a suggestion: bb has, I’m sure, a measurement of how much time the average person spends on the site per visit. Hasn’t it gone down–markedly–since the introduction of the bbs? And, doesn’t that statistic figure in to a website’s value and what they can charge for ads?

Put my vote in with those saying my interest in bb has always been 25% about the links and 75% about the comments. My behavior with bb used to be I’d skim the post and then go straight to the comments, if the comments were interesting I might watch the linked video or dig deeper into the subject.

Now it seems like I skim through the links, think, “Oh that’s interesting”–then find something else to do. I don’t engage with the posts in at all the same level of depth. (Because that depth just isn’t there any more).

I’d also agree with the above that the overall feel of commenting has swung towards the “peeing in an ocean of piss” direction. You might say that’s what all internet comments are, but bb has always been a rare exception to that, or at least has been to me. We used to be happy mutants! I don’t get that sense of community any more.

Anyhow, I’m happy that bb is trying new things, and confident that if it doesn’t work out they’ll bring back something that does. If, as people are saying, the bbs system is lowering the number of comments intentionally–well, that’s just nuts

[DennisArmstrong]

Daneel speaks the truth.

[daneel]

@teufelsdrockh

Here’s a suggestion: bb has, I’m sure, a measurement of how much time the average person spends on the site per visit. Hasn’t it gone down–markedly–since the introduction of the bbs? And, doesn’t that statistic figure in to a website’s value and what they can charge for ads?

Almost certainly not. I think the amount of people who read comments are <<5 % of the readership. We’re a rounding error.

[suavefucker]

Realistically, more like 10-45 percent.

[DennisArmstrong]

Introducing BBS, our new forums

Disqus used to load dynamically when you scrolled down far enough to see the comment section, and IIRC it only loaded on about 5% of page impressions. We did some ‘heat map’ testing once to see where people scrolled to absolutely on the page, and I think about 8% of people scrolled down far enough to see comments then. That was a few years back.

[codinghorror]

Related and also excellent with similar data findings:

You Won’t Finish This Article

[codinghorror]

Ironically I now find the discussion in this topic is of rather high quality.

(Not at all implying that is because of the software, but rather, because the BB community is of generally high quality relative to almost everywhere else on the Internet.)

[kbert]

It’s hard to follow as conversation / discussion; unthreaded is rough!
One strategy I loved with busy (60+ comments) conversations on topics I wasn’t particularly passionate about was to sort by Likes/popularity and if a thread wasn’t of interest I could quickly scroll til another active (well liked) thread started. It was easy to do, just scroll until the post was at the far left, check the ‘like’ count and read. When the likes dropped to ~4 I’d call it quits.
This here conversation is really hard to follow re: who’s responding to whom, etc.
(This “Welcome” panel is still showing… Do I have to ‘see our FAQ’ to make it stop ‘appearing’?

I also wonder at the lack of input from cowicide, for an instance of the ‘constant regulars’ who seem to have abandoned us… I miss them