Yes - “public profile and friends list” is the base permission level Facebook’s auth system asks for. You can’t ask for lower permission than this.
1 Like
Add me to the list of people wanting to know which editors were getting sniffy about readers having the temerity to comment on their precious articles.
2 Likes
Here’s my complaints:
-
372 posts in and I don’t know if the gist of my point has been covered 100 times. In a threaded environment, I would know easily since I would search the root posts of the thread to see if the topic was addressed. In this system, the best that I can do is read every post, all 372 of them! I can’t even do a search without loading every comment group one at a time until they all appear.
-
The lack of deep threading makes it really difficult to see where a conversation is going. The Discourse implementation of this is half-assed to say the least.
-
The desire to select feature comments is probably not going to work out as well as you think it will. Many of the best comments in an old-style BB thread were responses. Featuring responses in the current system is really confusing.
-
The more expansive BBS format is nice, but it really isn’t designed for high throughput sites like BB. When you go to a video game forum or sites where there may be one or two posts on a topic per day, this type of tech works out. When 50 people want to comment in an hour, it breaks.
-
Let me repeat: NESTING NESTING NESTING! Without that, this forum is broke.
-
Finally, the highest signal/noise implementation of a forum on the Net is SlashCode. Reddit also has a good implementation. Disqus and LiveFyre are reasonable. Discourse is towards the bottom.
3 Likes
Quoted for truth. Fix nesting and fix the mobile interface and you MIGHT have a winner on you hands. Everything else is tweaks, but these are a must.
2 Likes
BoingBoing started as a print zine for nearly a decade before the website, and even the website carried through for a long time (5 years, maybe?) without comments of any kind.
The content production and discussion aspects of boingboing have always been two separate entities, in my mind. I don’t understand the pessimism behind creating a better platform to cultivate a section that has always been second to content.
I see this as boingboing reaching out and saying “hey, you guys create some awesome discussion - here’s something more for you to do that with”
I’m more interested in “why” than “whom”. . . but, yeah,
God* save us from ‘comfortable writers’.
*so to speak
I think this topic should remain perpetually open.
2 Likes
Yes but no but yes but no.
The click-through into the walled garden won’t harvest “guests”, who previously could relatively easily respond to articles / comments. So I felt that sitting here in SW London, I could engage people all over the planet - learn from what they had to say, challenge their intransigence, that kind of thing.
The candy on the other side of the clickthrough has to be delicious, and the smell has to waft through, to attract roving eyes to the comments. With fantastic Notable Replies, that could happen, but it needs a super eye for selection.
I felt the evolution with BB was an intense and fantastic change. As time went by, more and more diverse people flowed in, seething with curiosity and acting on their impulses. They came from all over. PR campaigns would mount and astroturf articles, which was ever so fun to spot and harry, especially with the NRA bunch.
So partially, we BBers continue, but to avoid becoming sweaty middle aged people staring at computer screens and making enemies of eachother in our dark caves, I’d love to see that same vibrance coming through and attracting the hordes of interested folk.
2 Likes
What in your mind makes this a walled garden? More like a public park, no?
Yes, a public park. It’s great, and evolving. I’m waiting for an article to get a really exciting response. Some gorgeous debate and interaction.
2 Likes
What in your mind makes this a walled garden? More like a public park, no?
It turns out this public park is run by Michael Bloomberg.
This thread should probably be perma-open, if that’s possible.
1 Like
We’re at the point where the discussion is wearing down fast to “I am entitled to post at Boing Boing, and comments on a separate page is a betrayal of that entitlement”.
This complaint used to result all the time with moderated and banned users at the old comments, too. The difference is that the new system makes the underlying social contract – “we decide what to publish at our site, period” – much more obvious than it used to be.
So hey, progress! Instead of folks offering the same criticisms simply because we didn’t publish their comments, we can now move onto the specifics of our nefarious commentariat-manipulating agendas.
Sure, I can understand that it feels weird, because it’s a new setup and has some rough edges. But this idea we set up forums so we could have less people posting less stuff? Madness!
If that were our game–if we only wanted to run agreeable, fawning responses–we’d have just killed comments completely.
No problem, I got your back. Although, I’m still amazed that some males still assume default even when the handle contains a lady name. I’ve had it happen in threads where I specifically mentioned that I’m a mom. 
@awesomerobot Some of it is obviously that many (most?) of us started reading boingboing during a time when it already had comments. Also, and obviously, near enough all of us started commenting during a time when comments were attached to articles - the current commenter squad are the product of the previous approach to it.
That’s probably a part of it. Still, I hope you agree that a forum will attract a different group of people?
1 Like
With respect, Rob, we really aren’t. We’re telling you why we think BB is better that way, which is not the same thing at all.
Presumably you are interested in our opinions, or why have a forum at all, let alone a comment system? I’m sorry that our opinions aren’t the same as yours, but that’s opinions for you.
We’re not entitled to anything; it’s your site. But in a completely different way, it’s our site, too – and if we felt otherwise then BB would be the poorer. Again, I get the impression that you don’t agree; but I’m sure that must be false. “Happy mutants”, and all that.
3 Likes
Personally, I don’t feel particularly entitled to post comments, I just found that the best part of BoingBoing was the comments left by other readers, and you’ve intentionally broken that. Your house, your rules, but you’ve made your website much less vital for me by doing so. And from the tone of the comments here, the same is true for many others, who were amongst the keener consumers of your blog.
I don’t buy the ‘greatest hits’ argument at all, and for me at least, I’ve just stopped going beyond skimming the home page. I glance in here to see if any article is generating any discussion but the only one that seems to be is this one.
Meh. All good things and all that. C’est la vie. I have no right to expect a website to be run for me. I should just enjoy the free ice cream until it runs out.
3 Likes
One area I personally think could help in large topics is the ability to multi expand.
If I reply to post #100 which is a reply to post #33, let me click on 100, expand it and from inside the expansion also be able to expand post 33. It would make finding roots of discussion tangents easier cause you would not lose your place.
Is that what you are referring to with the “fix nesting” ?
1 Like
Also with respect, I endorse this comment.
3 Likes
Posts should appear immediately below the post they are replying to. Like they do on every other system I’ve come across. Makes it FAR easier to follow threads of conversation.I get it’s a new system and you are starting from the ground up, but some things just work.
3 Likes
