Dave Winer’s Commenting Proposal
Based on a recent post by Dave Winer (RSS pioneer) called Proposal: A new kind of blog comment system. And a follow up has been posted here: Why I like comments. Briefly, the idea behind the new commenting system it is the following:
- Disable commenting on posts older than 24 hours
- Comments are invisible to other commenters until the 24 hour period expires
- Commenters can edit their comments during the period
- Length limit of 1000 characters
So jumping back to my mail inbox and the comments folder with over a 100 unread and unresponded (and spam) messages, I decided to give it a go, starting from point one. I fully agree with Dave about the reasoning behind all the points, but personally think that 24 hours is too harsh, so I started off with 7 days, keeping in mind that this has to be decreased.
This means that when a post is published, you (my readers) have 7 days to comment. Don’t worry, commenting on support pages for my WordPress plugins has not been switched off.
I’ll hopefully be implementing the rest of the features throughout September, and will keep you posted on Twitter (@kovshenin). Cheers!
Update: Due to some temporary WordPress limitations, I had to switch comments back on for a while. Will probably write a short snippet on how to achieve such functionality without having to do it from within your WordPress settings, which applies to pages as well.
Do you also keep comments open for editing during those 7 days?
The whole point of keeping comments open for editing could, IMHO, be very confusing if comments, that trigger other comments, are edited again.
So, comments are invisible to other commenters? In this case they might find themselves confronted with comments like their own, or even meaningless comments because issues have been solved by previous commenters …
Maybe I have to get used to the idea but my first impression is: Confusing.
Aiko, I agree. It is confusing, which is why I’m taking each point at a time, trying to get used to it.
So yes, editable comments works only when other comments are hidden. Getting rid of duplicate comments is simple – moderation, maybe comments could be paired, don’t know..
Konstantin, I re-read the blogpost from Dave Winer and I'm not happy with his solution. There are a couple of things that bother me, most important:
1. In fact he is saying: "You should read my blog on a daily basis otherwise you won't be able to comment" – Only 24 hours fixed time to comment.
2. He obviously doesn't like a discussion on his blog. So any exchange of thoughts between author and commenters is blocked.
I wish you lots of luck implementing Dave's ideas :-) On my blog I'm going to leave things the way they are:
1. No time limit
2. Moderation is always on
3. "Good" commenters are added to the white-list (no future moderation)
4. "Bad" commenters / spammers are added to the black-list (no option to comment anymore)
Aiko, I believe theres something behind Daves idea. We wouldnt find out what until we try ;)
Say it ain't so, Konstantin!
I'm with Aiko on all points on this this. I know for a fact that I've benefited from comments made on your site that would have exist with these rules in effect. Comments can add a ton of value to the content. Your custom post type posts are a good example.
Also, I tried to say a quick thanks the other day for the hook debugging post, but couldn't. I thought something was broken, but now I understand that comments are closed. Kind of a bummer.
Lets just give it a try and see how it goes ;)