How Facebook ruined comments (at least for me) | Hacker News Reader

How Facebook ruined comments (at least for me)

techland.time.com

98 pointstechnologizer41 comments

Google+ does this too, except for top-level articles. My office was using G+ to share articles and status updates, but Google seems to have gone out of their way to make that as frustrating an experience as possible. There's no chronological view anymore, and sometimes it just doesn't show articles from some people unless you go directly to their profile.

We've had the same issue on our page (VLC 93000+ likes), and we really thought it was a bug: the reply was above the question...

We tried to remove and redo the comments, but it always ended like that.

I'm glad to not be alone :)

Commenting online is an afterthought, and it is really sad to me why this is so. Disqus and Livefyre are what most people use, but they have a ton of room for improvement. Some might say that they are doing really well, which would be true; however, there is hardly any competition, so anything Disqus and Livefyre do will be perceived as well, or simply, good enough.

I've been working on a way to redo commenting in my spare time, and I would like for it to become a thing. My idea consists of synced comments, an RSS like feed, a one column design (no threaded comments!) with expanding and minimizing replies, and a currency connected with real money that people can use to tip one another. I know it sounds far fetched, and it is, but I truly believe that commenting should be given saliency if writing and publishing online is going to move forward.

The next step is making my designs and ideas into a reality, however, I don't know how to code. I'm seeking someone who does, and in the meantime, I am teaching myself how to get starting with programming. The thing is, I could spend the next 1-2 years of my life learning how to code what I want to do when there is someone out there who knows how to do it already.

I suppose this comment is also to raise awareness for what I want to do for the future of commenting online. Send me a DM on Twitter @raymondduke if you are interested. I do have a plan to monetize from day one. I'll gladly tell you what I want to do and if you are interested maybe we can start making this happen.

Bite the bullet and learn to code. I did. It's easier if you have a project in mind. You can be competent enough to whip up an MVP in about 10-12 weeks if you work hard learning Ruby On Rails.

I've tried to get started a few times and I am finding it to be the most frustrating thing I've ever done in my life. I think there is something in my brain that is completely against what is involved with coding; it's like I have some cognitive-allergic reaction to it.

But, I see your point. And I want to put what I want to do a reality, so I will keep trying. I think it would just be so much better if I can find someone to work with instead of try to do it all myself.

Nah, that's just what's it is like learning to code. You just have to get through it and get more experienced. Once you're past the frustrating parts it becomes really enjoyable.

However, I don't know what language you're starting out with but that also makes a huge difference. Some approaches just click better with people than others. I love Lisp, others can't stand it. I hate C pointer syntax, it always confuses me while I had no problems with 'pointers' in 68000 assembly for example.

Just try out a couple of languages.

A couple of languages have been suggested to me already. I just don't know what one is best for my purposes. I was told to start with HTML5 and CSS3. Someone told me to stay away from Django, but to learn Python.

Does all code get the same results? Is it just a matter of preference? Or can some code do things that other code can't , thus making certain goals only possible with certain language?

For what you're trying to do it is mostly a matter of preference. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_tarpit)

http://autotelicum.github.io/Smooth-CoffeeScript/ is an excellent introduction into just-enough-code to make something. coffeescript is a much easier to understand javascript and if you combine it with node.js to do a web app, you can code your entire project in one language (plus some html and css markup).

I'm checking it out, thanks. From what I've been told, what I want to do is a "big project" -- in the words of another commenter: "you're going to need front end design and code (html, css and javascript), some sort of server side code (php, python, ruby, c# ...) and a database of some sort (MySQL, NoSQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle ...). the best place to start would be html and css though"

So far the link you shared seems to be doing a good job of introducing code at the entry level, but as being able to code my entire project with it, I am skeptical.

I haven't noticed this myself (and I have the replies feature) so maybe it's just one of many things they're testing with a limited number of users. I agree with the OP though, I don't see how this would be useful for anyone.

> It turns out that the change doesn’t affect most personal Profiles. Instead, it’s only applicable to Pages — such as the one for TIME — and for individuals with more than 10,000 followers, who Facebook thinks are likely have active communities on their pages.

Threaded comments are a good thing. This seems like a UI problem. One suggestion:

1) Put the thread reply text field at the top of the comments and show new replies at the top, at least for the user who made the comment.

2) Replying anywhere else should require clicking on Reply under that comment.

This makes it intuitively clear that thread replies are not replies to a thread comment.

This would take users some time to adjust to, but should fix the problem.

I know at least one site that does this. Ahem.

EDIT: Looking more carefully at the second screen shot, it looks like they did this. Seems like a non-issue in that case. The first screenshot for some reason doesn't have that change. Who knows if they are A/B testing or what. Strange that the OP did not notice this difference.

Threaded comments are a bad thing. I've gone through this thoroughly in a blog post (http://blog.iroquote.com/post/45908133231/5-reasons-why-thre...), but here is an overview of why:

1. Screen width limits the depth of threaded replies.

2. Indented replies look horrible on mobile screens, and make the depth of reason (1) even smaller.

3. We (typically) lose chronological order.

4. A complex comment tree makes it cumbersome to track who replied to what.

5. Non-techy users don't get it well, which eventually leads to a inconsistent tree.

I think the search for an ideal comment system is a problem worth solving. IMO it is best solved by:

1. A single thread in chronological order.

2. Quote feature, like in forums, to allow direct replies.

3. Some summarization technique to highlight relevant comments.

That's what I'm doing at my startup, and I would like to see other approaches too, because it's about time we figure out how to do an intuitive and powerful comment system.

I find that 4chan's comment system is surprisingly effective, especially being able to mouseover a link to a comment and have it pop up.

That is a nice feature, but not possible on mobile.

I have to say, having used newsgroups, forums, and reddit for years and years, I totally disagree - conversations by their nature are threaded, not linear - people need to have the freedom to break off and discuss tangents without impacting the main thing.

With the quote feature you just end up with giant quote pyramids and impossible to track discussions.

That said, with Facebook it seems they have a) broken the chronology, which is insane, and b) not made it damned obvious that it's a threaded system, hence the confusion.

Giant quote pyramids are a big mistake of old forum systems. But imagine quoting without quotes-in-quotes. Combine that with "click on quote" to see the post.

BTW, HN also breaks chronology.

HN only breaks chronology on sister threads, where it doesn't matter.

In 8 years (or whatever) of reading HN comment, I've never once had an issue with chronology of comments.

If there were no threads, it would be such a mess, it wouldn't be worth reading.

Well the chronology is following a branch :)

I completely disagree. Single threaded conversations are hijacked by the loudest and often most annoying commenters, don't allow interesting diversions, don't allow recovery from dead end conversations, don't organize information naturally, and are just generally horrible. They quickly follow Godwin's law, and there is very little chance for recovery. A few comments by idiots and the thread is lost.

Hacker News without threaded replies would be a disaster. The most interesting discussions are often thread branches, and I'm very thankful much of the uninteresting stuff and endless self-important debate is isolated where it belongs - in a thread.

In simple cases, as with a few comments on a photo by someone with 500 friends, threads are overkill and likely to degrade the conversation. On large board with hundreds of commenters, threads are essential.

Your points are either wrong or symptoms of bad UIs, not threaded comments.

Understood only by programmers? Have you tested that theory? It's wrong. Threads are all over the internet and used competently by all kinds of people. Even my mother understands threads.

Hard to follow a thread? I can't even describe how much better threaded comments are than Iroquote, even if horizontal scrolling is required.

So yeah, I disagree 100%.

You're free to disagree, as I disagreed with you.

A few more defenses to my opinion: single threaded conversations can be saved from annoying idiots through a highlighting feature. I'm talking Slashdot comments (which are threaded but what I refer to is hiding vs highlighting according to karma). Threads are not the only way of filtering relevant content.

It takes just one commenter to make a thread inconsistent, and the theory is easily tested: just pick a topic in Reddit and soon you will find one. Also the limit in reply depth causes inconsistencies: once you get to deep into a reply tree, the narrow space left by the indentations eventually forces someone to reply to a higher level in the tree (specially mobile). It's just a technical limitation, not a social theory.

If a discussion ends up diverting considerably from the OP, just start a new discussion. That's what Branch.com focused heavily on. They are single threaded, but work slightly like multi-threads. It works nicely. Note also that they have a highlighting feature, and another mechanism to suppress spammers.

You have good points defending threads, but I'm not alone against them. I'm sure even Facebook carefully considered threads for their comment system. Many Facebook groups have intense activity (not your normal 30-comment on a friend's photo), I've even witnessed one with over 700 comments. The OP shows us they seem to be experimenting with threads, but they are not going for it 100%. Even Google+ is single-threaded for large discussions. Why?

This thread between us is a PERFECT example of why threads are necessary. We are having a conversation that would not happen if there were no threads, and which I would hesitate to engage in because it would be side-tracking the main point. We'd have all sorts of people telling us to stay on topic. Look how you're responding to individuals and they can see your response. Look how easy it is to follow the discussion.

Sorry, but IMO, you are dead wrong on this.

And you're worried about "inconsistent threads" from naive users? Imagine what naive users do when there are no threads...

Just start a new thread? And lose the audience? Pollute the top-level namespace with tangents? How do you pull people back into the discussion. This is not a solution.

Thread depth limit has never been an issue on HN because most discussions die out by that point and people move on to other top level topics. If it were an eternal discussion with endless threads, there are plenty of solutions to the UI issues there, but that would a rare use case where such depth were needed.

If I'm dead wrong, explain me how Branch.com is being successful as a "good web conversations platform" with a single thread layout. Plus, explain me their decision to make Branch "better and simpler" (http://bulletin.branch.com/) by removing their branch feature (creating new conversations as a reply to a comment). They just abandoned their only threading feature (heck, their company is named BRANCH), to make the experience better.

I'd also like to see you explain how Google+ made their Disqus competitor with single threads. Are Branch and Google also dead wrong?

I forgot, Google+ is killing it and Google always has top notch UI. Actually, G+ is having issues because they are ordering comments to sort out the junk and losing chronology because single threads are horrible.

I don't know much about Branch and I haven't seen it used on any major sites. Seems the threaded providers are doing quite well and leading the pack. Nobody complains that Disqus has threads and I see all sorts of ignorant wack jobs successfully using threads in the corners of the Internet.

So yeah, maybe Google and Branch are wrong. Not much of a stretch.

Sorry if t threatens your startup but best to know you're wrong early.

Thanks for the "wisdom" but I've done my research already. There is no consensus on the web that threaded is hands down the best way to do it. Some prefer flat some prefer threaded. I'm just building flat++, fixing the worst problems.

There is plenty of evidence that the battle between these two isn't won. On the full threading side: Reddit, HN, Slashdot, Disqus, LiveFyre. On the flat (or 1 level nesting) side: Branch, Google+, Facebook, Discourse (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/discussions-flat-or...), Vanilla Forums, etc. Seems like a fair fight to me.

I've been a bit more mindful of this in the past few hours, and I have to say, I disagree even more.

Disqus does threads nicely, and every discussion I look at benefits from threads, and would be a disaster without them.

How can they make a mistake like this? Unless they are aiming to change how people comment on things. That won't happen without an interface change IMO because people are used to the way it was for about 4-5 years..

it's not a mistake, it's business decision. in other news, coming soon: 'promoted comments'

Well, they needed to do something about the comments on really large pages, because those were useless before: you'd see a disconnected selection of the 25 most recent comments and a link "2864 comments, click here to show 25 more". Those people were only sort of / sometimes responding to each other, and even when they were the comments all had tunnel-vision on the most recent 25. Even just showing "comments on this massive post made by your friends" would be an epic improvement (and something it seems they are now both able to do and are actually doing), but that already breaks chronology even without "bubbling".

Yep, this is a huge failure. I've made sure to tell all page admins I know to not enable it.

For pages over a critical number of likes it's still better though. Once you hit over 100 or so comments, unthreaded commenting is just too hard on Facebook (especially since you can't easily load all the comments at once and Ctrl-F for what you're looking for).

This is only an issue because the mobile app doesn't have Replies yet. once the mobile apps support it the chronological issue will go away. Relax.

I think it blends in well with the nature of Facebook comments. Most of the comments are quick observations about a post. So it's better to absorb the relevant observations first then continue reading if it sounds interesting. Plus the reply feature fixes any chronological issue.

How does the reply feature fix the chronology problems? If you want to make a comment that refers to two previous comments, where do you put it to guarantee it stays after both of them?

That kind of reference is messy even with chronological order. It's better to directly quote a post.

I've noticed that when I comment on a page and come back later, my comment appears at the top. Now I realize it probably only appears that way to me. That's good, because I was wondering why FB was choosing to highlight the comments that it did.

I think it's a bit like the weather in New England, if its not to your liking you need to go inside and have a cup of coffee and then come back outside, all new weather. :-)

I turned it on for a ~75k page and regret it. Does someone know if it can be disabled? I did not find anything in the settings.

HN has the same problem (comment threads get reordered to put the "best" first, so it's very hard to tell what you have and haven't already read), but we seem to be ok with it.

I find it annoying that I still have to click 'load comments' several times in order to find my own.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com