Commenting happiness - brainstorming!

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Sun, 17 Oct 2010 21:43:24 +0000

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There have been a few discussions around the last few weeks about commenting on the Archive of Our Own, and while we have some ideas of our own for improving and encouraging more feedback in general, we would love to invite more ideas from all of you!

Some of our current plans:

basic performance improvements to the comment form so it works quicker :)
a "kudos" feature that lets a reader indicate (with an optional one-line comment) if they enjoyed a story, complete with happy icon:

adding more nifty stats including # of downloads, and referring pages in the last month or so (so author can see if they were recced somewhere)

"badges" for heavy commenters (possibly with bonuses for commenting on older stories)

marking stories on the Reading History page as commented-on or not, allowing you to sort by this status

an option to reply to multiple comments at once

a "private" comment option to send comments just to the author

Adding an option to send an invite to people who comment without an AO3 account.

This is a more general feature: an optional "tip of the day" that will show the first time you come to the archive on a given day, which might point you to a new feature, suggest creating a new bookmark, or suggest posting a comment on a read story.

Do you have other ideas? Thoughts on these? Let us know what would make commenting more fun, or what other kinds of feedback you would like to get on your works!

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MilkberryBunny Sun 17 Oct 2010 11:31PM UTC

I think the kudos, stats, and badges are all awesome ideas! I'm not sure the badges will be entirely effective, but it could be fun never the less.
I'd personally prefer the kudos system is enable before anything else. Aside from comments generally being faster to post. Because I'm still really hoping for the subscription system to come out soon.
Thanks for noticing lack of comments was a problem! It's appreciated.

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zillah975 Mon 18 Oct 2010 12:32AM UTC

I particularly like the "kudos" idea -- I'd love to be able to just click an "I enjoyed this" button or something at the end of a story.

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marginaliana Mon 18 Oct 2010 02:45AM UTC

I really like the kudos! feature - sometimes I enjoyed a piece but don't have the mental energy to come up with something to say. I'd love to be able to click a generic button of yayness. On the other hand, I wonder if perhaps some creators won't like that, because I do think it could encourage people to just click instead of trying to come up with a substantive comment, and I think that would be a negative. So... maybe individual creators could allow kudos on their stories or not? I don't know if that makes the idea exponentially more difficult to create, though.

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Farla Mon 18 Oct 2010 03:09AM UTC

How about a system to indicate what sort of comment the author accepts and making that a sortable option? Ideally it'd be nice to have bunch of options because people have a lot of different ideas on this (some people don't want a comment just saying a reader liked it for whatever reason, some people are okay with grammar corrections but hate characterization complaints or vice versa), but a no criticism/mild criticism/anything set would be good.

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EosRose Mon 18 Oct 2010 05:02AM UTC

Oh, wow! These are all excellent ideas. I'm especially fond of the adorable kudos happy icon. So cute! <3

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1. Tathrin Mon 18 Oct 2010 03:01PM UTC
  
  I second that, eosrose. The "kudos" thing seemed a lot less cool before I saw the picture that would go with it. At first I was just, "sort of like 'liking' something on YouTube, hm? Meh, not bad, not bad..." but now I've scrolled down to see the icon that would accompany it, and I'm sort of having a cute-attack over it. I don't think I could ever receive a "kudos" notification without smiling!
  (Apologies for commenting so long after the discussion, but I've only just joined.)
  
  Last Edited Mon 18 Oct 2010 03:02PM UTC
  
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Starfield (Guest) Mon 18 Oct 2010 05:38PM UTC

Kudos (with happy icons) and badges and skins are all very fluffy, but they don't make me comment or reacting more often. What's really missing is things like notifications. FFN tells me when my favorite author posted a new story, when a favorite story got a new chapter, and, if I'm so inclined, I can get an RSS feed on every fandom tuned to my preferred filter options.
In other words, if a fic is up at FFN and AO3, I'm more likely to comment on FFN, simply because FFN informed me that a new chapter/story is up and gave me handy link to the story/chapter in question, while I'll only know about the AO3 version because I went hunting for it (for the handy ebook version and if the author makes it easy for me to find).

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Scribblesinink (Scribbler) Mon 18 Oct 2010 06:18PM UTC

Oh, I wish the kudos were already active! I am struggling right now with what to say after having read a story, that I enjoyed but am not raving about, and where "enjoy" really isn't the proper term (non-con), and chances are I'm ending up not saying anything.
Another thing that might improve the comment ratio is having the comment form open at the end of the fic, instead of "hidden" under a button in a string of buttons. Just a thought.

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1. Xparrot Wed 20 Oct 2010 03:32AM UTC
  
  Having the comment form open at the end, I second this - it would mean that people new to the site wouldn't have to figure out the way to leave feedback; it'd be right there.
  
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2. 1. ThreeSidedOrchid Sun 14 Nov 2010 03:27PM UTC
    
    I third this idea. I think far more people would be inclined to comment if the field were right there - not only would they not have to hunt for the link, but it's a far more prominent prompt to encourage feedback.
    I like the kudos button and badges ideas too.
    
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redsnake05 Mon 18 Oct 2010 06:39PM UTC

I like the kudos button idea, and am really relieved that it's not a 'like' button. Kudos carries more weight and the implication that the reader sees the worth of the story. I don't know that badges would work. Well, I wouldn't be motivated by them, and, depending on their appearance and where they end up (like, automatically placed in one's profile), I could end up demotivated. Perhaps badges could be an opt-in feature?
I also think being able to send provate comments is a good idea, and being able to invite commenters who don't have accounts would be great too.

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Rebecca Tue 19 Oct 2010 07:16AM UTC

As someone else has said somewhere on the internets: There should be another "Add Comment" button below all the comments (if there are any).

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1. lian Tue 26 Oct 2010 01:55AM UTC
  
  THIS x1000!
  
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Pteriforever Mon 25 Oct 2010 10:16AM UTC

For unfinished multi-chapter stories, I'd like to see something indicating how frequent the updates are. Something like the number of updates in the past two months, or the rolling average of how far apart the past 5 updates have been. So people recognize active stories, stories on hiatus, infrequently but reliably updating stories, and dead stories without having to delve deeper to look at the dates. It would be useful in my opinion.

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1. ThreeSidedOrchid Sun 14 Nov 2010 03:28PM UTC
  
  seconded!
  
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briar_pipe Thu 28 Oct 2010 03:01AM UTC

This point was raised at the Camelotremix debriefing. Some ideas that were tossed about included:
- putting the comment button in the center, as it is on LJ and DW (more visible)
- allowing users to set their preferences to always show comments (some people like to read previous comments before commenting, and while they can currently, it's an extra step)
- creating a more interactive feel on AO3 as a whole, which doesn't necessarily follow the standard archiving system, but setting up PMs (or private comments), subscriptions, more collections (which could function somewhat like communities in terms of advertising), and other community-based activities might encourage people to comment more
- encouraging the mindset that simply because something is old doesn't mean it's awkward to leave comments (any archive has an advantage over journaling services in this case)

Some people suggested they feel they should be more formal in AO3 comments than they would on a journaling service, so they don't feel comfortable leaving the same kind of squeeful comments that encourage actual conversation. I don't actually know how to fix that, except maybe work on the options above.
Thanks for addressing this point (and for reminding me that I have two tabs open waiting for comments)!

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1. Alixtii Sat 13 Nov 2010 01:51PM UTC
  
  These.
  
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elizabeth_rice Mon 15 Nov 2010 07:39PM UTC

I like the kudos idea, stats, marking story as commented-on and sorting, and a private comment option.
But I dislike the "badges" idea. As far as I'm concerned this is a community, not a competition. Regarding bonuses, what do you mean by bonuses?
I've read the comments and I like the following ideas that were suggested:
1. I love the notification idea that Starfield suggested. I'd love a way to track new stories posted by a particular or favourite writer (if s/he writes in multiple fandoms then the additional option to track by fandom too), when a WIP is updated, etc. The notification should also contain a link to the story.
2. Rebecca's suggestion - adding another "add comment" button below all the comments (if any).
3. Pteriforever suggested update stats for WIPs which I think would be nice too.
My own suggestions:
1. The "add comment" button placement - currently the buttons below a standalone story are: "Top", "Bookmark", "Add comment". The buttons below a multi-chaptered story are: "Top", "Next chapter", "Bookmark", last "Add comment".
I think the order should be: the "Add comment" button should always come first, then "Next chapter" (if any), the "Bookmark" button is fine where it is, then last "Top" button.
2. is it possible to be able to preview a comment before posting it? We can add html codes in our comments so it might be useful to be able to preview it first.

Last Edited Mon 15 Nov 2010 07:47PM UTC

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