Tech Changes!
As you may have noticed, we're taking some tech changes live on the site — the changes will primarily be an “under the hood” kind of thing (new theme, to replace the one we’ve used since 2012!) but we're trying to preserve the existing design as much as possible. (The theme is like the engine of the car; the design is like the color paint.) We're also going to be trialing a new commenting software that should be a lot better than the current one and while hopefully fix the caching problems we’ve had, such as duplicate comments.
In any event — pardon our dust, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the new commenting system. (We’re working on an “expand all” button…)
You can still post comments using a fake email, if you're wondering. Two other big changes: you can upvote comments (the +0 next to the Reply button) and you can edit your comment for 15 minutes, even as a non-logged in user — after you make a comment if you hover over it you'll see a Gear symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the post. (Both circled in green in the screengrab below.)
This commenting system (WPDiscuz) has a lot of other bells and whistles I’m still considering – the ability to @ users, the ability (if signed in) to see highlighted new comments since your last sign in, the ability to search comments… so stay tuned!
Stock photo via Stencil.
So I appreciate that no one likes change and some of the “I don’t like this” may just be unreasonableness. BUT – the lack of chronological order is awful! Comments don’t make as much sense (both in terms of each thread and within a thread), the old way really contributed to the sense of community, and upvoting just plain sucks. I visit a few s*tes – I don’t read comments on most of them and it’s almost 100% because of these features exactly. I don’t know why you would suddenly incorporate them.
Also, I don’t know who wants to register. Maybe some do but to the extent that there used to be regular meet ups, etc., we have really veered away from that to now most people being “anon” – this seems like another feature that no one wants and that may be actively off-putting to people with privacy concerns. I think for a place that often discusses sensitive work issues this is particularly important. I think a lot of people would not comment if they thought that this was in any way traceable to their IRL self.
I probably have other thoughts but I can’t focus enough on the new set up to even formulate those thoughts; please reconsider.
Additionally, the upvoting is kind of what I hate about the internet. The non-popularity contest of this place was one of the best parts of this comments section. If you wanted to make sure someone read something, you just posted early. It was basic but easy. I’m sure some may feel like it’s nice to have the option to put more popular threads up top but I have a hard time thinking it will improve the vibes of this place (and suspect it will do the opposite).
Agree with comment elsewhere that the ‘collapse all’ default is a huge pain.
Yes, I hate, hate , hate how comments are collapsed. We come here for the comments but that leads us to shop your featured items!! Don’t kill the golden goose!
I had your reaction to the upvotes initially but it’s been in use on the mom’s page for a long time and it’s fine. There’s no downvoting so it’s not really a popularity contest. It’s basically become a more efficient way to say “+1” which was happening before.
I think you can have a like button to accomplish this without changing the order though. I actually think this maybe existed before and went away?
Agreed on all points here — we need an expand all/collapse all toggle at the top of each post for comment threads. Also, the upvote (+ at the left bottom) does mess with the chronological order of comments, which as AIMS says contributed to the conversational aspect of the comments. If upvotes move the comment out of order to be prioritized, or higher in order, that does mess with the order of comments and the back and forth conversation that is so valuable here. Please get rid of the up vote feature and restore the expand all/collapse all feature, thanks! (But the 15 minutes to edit is a terrific new feature!)
This. I didn’t even realise it was upvote, I thought it was “I agree”.
There is nowhere close to the volume of posts or behaviour here to make upvote make any sort of sense.
Chronological works very well for checking whether something happened in the two hours since your last coffee break. Upvote just means you can’t scroll past without effort – which means the break is better spent doing something else.
Corporette =/= reddit. Thankfully. <3
Agree. I think it misses how most readers use this space. It’s not the same as a travel recommendation for a restaurant near whatever and you want the most useful result.
I’ve had the pleasure of being in charge of implemeting tech roll-outs, so I appreciate that they are never fun, and that there’s no way to please everyone. HOWEVER. I will add my voice to the chorus of complaints on the other posts today. Instead of focusing on specific features I will offer some context for my reaction.
This month has been cookoo bananas hard. Trying to take the results of the election into stride, and find a way to navigate the next four years, in addition to the uncertainty of the murky future beyond that. This is before taking any of the more personal sources of stress into account. But I’m mentioning it because it seems a theme for many of the people I interact with IRL, so I there’s a chance it may be a thing for the commentariat here as well.
I come here to read the comments as one of the few places of relative sanity that ALSO doesn’t put heavy demands on me. I hadn’t realized how important this site has been to my coping until I came here today and I encountered SO MUCH FRICTION. That I was not expecting. And that I don’t have capacity to engage with.
Look. I know you are running a business here, and that there’s no way in the world that deciding on the back end of the site could ever be a democratic process. That’s just not these things are run, even if this was a volunteer-run community organization, which is is not. However, as a long-time reader and sometimes commenter, I do believe that part of the business you are running is providing this gathering space in the comments. I don’t know many places on the internet with this kind of longevity in the comments section. And I’ve made it a point to keep up with the few that I know, because even with anonymity and people dropping out and new people coming in I value the sense of community and of an emerging “local” culture.
Clearly the moms’ side has weathered a similar change and it sounds like people took it into stride, so maybe it’s just me. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I honestly don’t know if I will have the spoons to continue interacting with this site, given everything I’ve said. Like it’s valuable to me, but my awareness of my own limits has never been as keen as it’s been this month. It makes me so sad to have to say this.
Please take this as it’s intended – a love letter to this site and what it has made possible in the comments over time.
TLDR: Its really bad.
Like- return of the edit button
Dislike – impact of upvoting on comment order (annoying to keep track of as you refresh during the day and dislike the ‘popular’ aspect of it) as opposed to it replacing “+1” type comments of agreement; color scheme moving away from the mostly-grayscale that the comments used to be (not good for offices)
Interesting point on grayscale. Some of the smaller changes we made (to headings and captions) is to move away from the pink/blue, but I’d asked them to add the different colors to comments to make the levels of comments clearer.
“under the hood” changes when it seems that most of the changes are quite visible.
Another request- can you have the default be to open a link in a new window?
I hate being taken away from where I am
In the thread convo if I want to check out a link.
again, people are here for the discussion, please prioritize making that the best experience possible.
It really is just too much work to read through the comments now. I have a stressful job and only a few minutes to peek in here everyday. It’s not worth the energy to interact with all this now.
I don’t know if Kat & team are still looking at the comments here, but I wanted to return and leave a message of appreciation for the way the new comment functionality has been smoothed out over the past week, gracefully and in the background. I was one of the people who got overwhelmed by the launch of the new feature, and I’ve been following everybody else’s comments with interest. I can see that the feedback was definitely taken into account, and even between yesterday and today the interface looks a little more similar to the old one? (It feels like there is less pink.)
I’ve rarely seen such an effective demonstration of valuing the community around a blog (vs talking about it). Thank you, Corporette team!