UI suggestions
Some suggestions I think would improve navigation a bit:
1.Comment votes. I think comment votes should appear at the bottom of the comment. The reason for that is is to avoid "copycat voting" (I'm sure there must be another term). I think it's a common effect: you see a comment, you see it has 5 votes while the rest you've been reading have 1 or 2, you start being predisposed to see it as a valuable comment even before reading it, you end up voting it too, etc. Similarly to why the top level reply box is at the end of the thread, I think having comment votes at the end of the comment (or even hidden under an expandable menu, but maybe that's too much) would help users reading comments more open-mindedly. I would even argue that putting the user name at the bottom would be a good idea as well, especially since the user base now is small is easy to adscribe more credibility to some user names than others, which is not bad by itself, but might push a type of "authoritative bias".
2.Top level comments count. If we understand top level comments as the main ideas discussed in a thread, maybe it would make sense to show that in the post. Right now, what we get in the submission listing is the title, username, the ~, the tags and the comment number. I wonder how important is having the total comment number shown here. I guess it's an indicator of activity, but maybe it'd be more interesting having the top level comment number, indicating the ramifications of the topic. Total comment count could be maintained as well, or not, or just when entering the submission, etc. New comments could still be shown in the listing. After all, if we are ordering by activity, we care that there is some activity, and total number of comments is not that relevant.
3.Cascading tags. Not so sure about this one, but I though I'd mention it. When marking a comment Off-topic... I think most usually all comments under that one will also be Off-topic. Maybe it'd make sense that from that point on all comments would be marked as off topic automatically, and possibly collapsed. Right now it seems when there is an off topic comment thread, you just keep seeing off topic tags down the line, which is a bit distracting and probably unnecessary since they are almost surely going to be off topic, so it's probably not necessary for user to try and judge that. Maybe, if it makes sense, this would better be done when the tags are more developed.
4.Parent link for context. Thank you for adding the parent link! Much needed. However, wouldnt it be better if when tapping a parent link, the end page would be the parent comment (obviously) plus the comment where you tapped the link? What I mean is, to provide better context, I think it'd be better to show the parent and the comment I was reading, with all other comments under the parent AND above the origin comment collapsed. I don't know if that's clear...
- Reply - Tag - Vote. Probably a bit nitpicking here, but I think inverting the current order of the Reply and Vote buttons would be a better fit. Since most people are right handed, and the action of voting is (probably?) more common than replying, having the vote button on the right side might be a minor enhancement in usability.
6.Highlighting OP's comments. Right now, OP's comments are marked by "(OP)" next to the username. I think it'd be better to make the indication more evident. For example, displaying OP's username in a different color or marking the comment with a different color (as with new comments in orange or own comments in purple). I would prefer the username color since it's less invasive while still being easy to spot.
Anyway, just some ideas I've had in the last few days, hopefully not too ridiculous or confusingly worded.
EDIT: Sorry for the generic title, I forgot to edit it before sending...
1: Yeah. That happens to me a lot on Reddit where the amount of votes makes the comment seem better.
Yup. "Bandwagon downvoting", incredibly frequent. Typical herd behavior.
What about not showing the score until you've voted / tagged it yourself? Or just otherwise require interaction to see it.
"Herd voting" is a much better term, thanks!
Maybe not showing until voting/tagging would be ok, the interaction you refer to... would that be like the expandable menu I mentioned or you had something else in mind?
Edit: oops, you edited it while I was answering. Ok, "bandwagoning" works very well, yes. Although I was actually referring to all types of voting, being up or down.
Interesting concept.
What about hiding the votes until you've voted (or maybe clicked to see the vote count)?
Thanks, ajar. There are some good suggestions in here. Here's some quick thoughts:
I think I agree (and will probably try doing that soon). One of the reasons I don't like putting it at the bottom though is that it's informational. If I'm coming into a large thread later, I may not want to read all the comments, and it's useful for me to be able to try to pick out some of the higher-voted ones easily. So in that case, having the score at the bottom makes that much more difficult (I have to scroll past the comment to be able to use the votes to help decide if I want to read it).
So I'm not totally certain, but I think in general it might be better to have them at the bottom. Some people have even suggested putting the score onto the vote button itself if it's going to be at the bottom anyway, which might be decent (and that's how topic voting is already). The main odd thing with that is that then score for your own comments will have to be displayed differently, since there's no vote button on your own comments.
I think this would be interesting information to show inside the thread, but not on the listing pages. The count of top-level comments alone doesn't really tell you much—there might be a thread with a really interesting discussion going on that's all underneath a single top-level comment, and seeing something like "1 thread" on the listing when there's 20+ comments in there wouldn't indicate that at all.
I agree, I think this is just another aspect of the comment-tagging system not being fleshed out at all at this point. It shouldn't be necessary to tag a whole off-topic chain.
Yeah, I think this is a bit of a conflict between what the "Parent" link is useful for when you're inside a thread vs. what you want it to do when you're coming from a userpage or the notifications page. I mentioned the need for a "restricted" comments view to be able to handle more-explicit "Context" links, so I think that would apply to this as well.
I assume you're talking about on mobile? I can definitely see how reversing the order on mobile would be helpful for right-handed people. The current ordering is more aimed at people on desktop, where I think Vote being on the left and Reply on the right makes sense. This is also what a lot of people will be familiar with—reddit used to have "reply" on the right but are moving it to the left in the new redesign (and a lot of people hate that change).
Yeah, I think the "(OP)" alone is too subtle. Maybe also bolding the username and/or the "(OP)", or potentially a colored stripe down the side (but that might be too much).
Ok... I was almost done replying... but since I'm on mobile I tapped on "Terms of use" by mistake and when I went back my comment was completely gone... Maybe you could look into that as well? Moving the bottom links to the sidebar, maybe?
Well, I will summarize.
Thanks for taking the time to answer, Deimos. I guess you must be swamped.
For number 1, maybe adding a "Collapse all comments under X votes" could help? Although a hard number would not take context into account. Maybe a "vote view", in which all comments appear collapsed with just the username, timestamp and vote count shown? That way it'd be easier to go through the thread and expand whatever is necessary?
(2) I was thinking of something like "2<33", meaning "2 threads, 33 total comments", showing both. It's not super important, in any case.
(4) I read your comment, but I'm not sure I understand this restricted view idea. I think whether in a notification or in slide a thread, often it's easy to forget what the parent said, especially with long subthreads. However, I think the combination of "Parent - Back" solves it pretty well. I'm going to use it a bit more and see.
(5), Yes, I'm on mobile, my computer is not behaving lately so I haven't even seen the site on desktop yet. As I said, it's a minor thing. I'm most worried now about what I said at the beginning of this comment.
(6) Great. Yes, bolding and maybe changing the font color would be more than enough.
Thanks again. And one more thing, I read you were planning on creating a ~tildes.announcements for dayoy discussions, etc. Amarok created a "digest" thread a while back. It might be a good idea to add it to the sidebar, maybe. Also, if you want and it would help, I can try to update it with the most recent conversations to so that you or Amarok or someone can make a new post. I was thinking of doing that, but I didn't want to double efforts.
Ugh, sorry. I'll add a confirmation tomorrow that asks you before leaving the page if you've started typing anything.
What about a toggle for showing scores or not, defaulting to hidden, and showing them both at the top and bottom of comments (useful for wall-of-texts)? Then you can still filter by vote signals, while dampening herd voting behavior.
Speaking of UI, has there been any discussion about adding thumbnails? I think it would make the site more visually interesting without adding that much to the server storage.
Can't wait for the unrelated ad images loaded for each article post. It honestly doesn't work very well for reddit. I wouldn't mind a pop-up for embedded youtube videos and similar, though.
I have it turned off on reddit. It really skews what you view when it's on.
I agree about news article thumbnails, which is why I'm saying it should be limited to sites like imgur and instagram where the thumbnail is directly related to what's being linked to.
I replied about this elsewhere, but just so it's also here (since I'm going to reply to the suggestions in the OP and bump it back up anyway):
I don't intend to add thumbnails. They only work well for images, and will help bias the site towards that type of content.
I'm not sure, I think I read it somewhere, somebody suggested it, but I can't even remember for sure if there was a response or what that response was... Iwant to think someone said it was going to be considered, but I might be misremembering.
I would love it of there was a way to default clicking posts or comment links to open in a new tab/window. The number of times I close out of the ~ tab is infuriating.