11
votes
Do not bump topics from offtopic comments?
Should offtopic comments bump up topics? IMO, offtopic discussion is not “real” discussion. Seeing a topic at top with 7 new comments only to discover that all of it is offtopic, meta discussion, is annoying and disappointing.
As an example, there is one topic on the front page (don’t want to link it), that was bumped by the biggest offtopic discussion I’ve seen on Tildes so far. The discussion itself is not wrong, and is quite interesting, but it’s not about the post. The comment chain should IMO either be in it’s own topic, or not bump the topic up.
It seems not that uncommon that there is a substantial comment thread which is off-topic for the topic in which it occurs.
I suggest there should be an option to move such a thread to a topic of its own (even in another group). (Such an option exists in some old-style forums.)
After such a move, a note that the thread has been moved along with the link to the moved thread could appear in the original thread location.
Not only would that clean up the original thread, it would make it easier to find the new topic discussion. Someone interested in a topic can easily miss a great conversation on it because it's nested in a thread on something they don't care about. By pulling it out and making it it's own post it becomes discoverable.
Keeping a link to it in the original thread would preserve the natural flow from original topic to tangent for those that want to follow it. Coming from the original thread it wouldn't be much different than a "continue this thread" link.
You know, I was really strongly opposed to allowing moving offtopic comments precisely because it would break the flow and remove the context of what sparked the off-topic discussion... but your comment may have actually convinced me it wouldn't be too bad if done properly. I think if the previous comment to the one that was moved was included as a quote in the moved comment that would also help, too.
So kudos for framing it in such a way that made me re-evaluate my stance. Thanks.
I think this would overly complicate commenting: where to put comments would become an issue, also most people would probably ignore the talk section and use the default one instead.
The criteria for what goes in the meta page is simple: Is it talking about something that would be recorded in the topic log? Examples: "Should this be moved to ~othergroup?", "The title is sensationalist. I'm changing it", etc
In the case OP is complaining about it's a discussion about general site features and policy, with only one small mention about the post itself. It should be spun off into its own post and moved to ~tildes, rather than go on the meta page.
Those who should be using the meta page (mostly moderators) can be trained to do so. Comments that don't use it when they should can be moved there by moderators.
Edit: accidentally hit post before done, rest of comment incoming. Edit 2: Comment completed.
That sounds good. I thougt of it as a more extensive thing.
That would be great for meta discussion, but moving comments to a new thread is still useful for topic drift.
Currently, the Activity sort is perfectly "consistent"—any comment in a topic causes it to bump back up to the top, there's no distinction between who made the comment, whether it was labeled as anything, etc. I think this is a useful option to keep when people (or eventually bots) want to easily follow all new comments, but it definitely won't keep working as the default with an activity level much higher than this.
I think I'd like to work on a different default sorting method that uses some conditions to decide when a thread should bump. Avoiding bumps when the new comments are in an "Offtopic" thread might be a good candidate, and so could various other things like the comments being extremely "deep" in a chain between the same few users (where it's usually just a couple of people talking/bickering back and forth, which others often won't care about).
It's a nice idea, but I think it would only serve to hide interesting discussions, even if they are offtopic. Besides, how would you even implement this? Some of the quasi-mods we've got running around here would have to tag it manually, because I can't think of a way to classify it automatically without either
Having an offtopic tag marking it as such after it's reached a threshold
Some complicated text parsing algorithm with keywords unrelated to the title or text of the original post
We already have comment tags. Everyone whose account is older than about a week gets to use them. People mark comments as exemplary, noise, offtopic, joke, or malice. So the tools are already here.
I think the point @Grzmot is making is that a comment is not necessarily marked as 'Offtopic' immediately. I don't know the average dwell time for a comment to go from being first posted to first labelling to being actioned by the Tildes system; but it isn't necessarily quick; so in the interim, the comment is going to bump the thread anyway.
Short of any hueristics to automatically detect "off-topicness", which is basically a giant can of worms, how do you propose this be implemented?
The activity sort works by sorting topics by last comment time. I suggest to leave out comments labeled as offtopic (and maybe noise as well).
In practice, this would not prevent offtopic discussion from bumping the topic, but it would reduce number of users who see the topic bumped. Especially if any comment in offtopic chain is left out from the activity sort.
But after the thread is already bumped, it doesn't matter if you mark it as offtopic, unless the offtopic tag would propagate to all replies of that particular comment.
Easy: any comment whose parent is off topic can be considered off topic for this purpose. We can't know the first off topic one before it is marked so, but further discussion of off topic stuff can be hidden like this. It is consistent with the collapsing of threads whose root is marked off topic, which we already do.
Allow people to tag their own comment as offtopic.
I've often wanted to make a comment that's a little offtopic but I can't tag it myself. I would if I could.
To me, this is a good thing. If Tildes allowed people to tag their own comments as "offtopic", that would lead to numerous irrelevant conversations cluttering up threads because people would feel like they had permission to make irrelevant comments. But, because people know they can't hide/suppress their own comments using the various comment labels, they're forced to think about what they're typing and whether it contributes to the discussion at hand.
Agreed - that's what the 'whisper' comment would be for, an aside to the OP that isn't part of the thread itself, kinda like exemplary messages are just between the person using the label and the OP. Once we have whispers we can probably evolve that mechanic into something that handles most cases of offtopic stuff as a sidebar so it doesn't clutter up the thread.
I'm still not sold on the idea of "whisper" comments.
I understand the reason for wanting them, but that reason is exactly the same reason that people want to label their own comments as "offtopic" (or "noise" or "joke"): so they can post irrelevant comments without interfering with everyone else's reading of the thread. Posting a "whisper" comment is just a slightly different implementation of a mechanism for hiding irrelevant comments. Does it really matter whether we do that via allowing people to use "offtopic" or "whisper"? The end result is the same: it's giving permission to people to post irrelevant comments by allowing them to hide/suppress those comments.
I feel like "whisper" comments are just a way of covering up problems rather than preventing them. That said, at least they would cover up those problems rather than leave them visible to everyone. But if the aim is to allow people to post irrelevant comments and hide them or suppress them or reduce their visibility, we could achieve the same outcome by tweaking the "offtopic" label.
So... if we're not willing to do one, I don't understand why we're willing to do the other.
Your mistake is in thinking that people need permission to post those comments or that offtopic/noise comments are something that needs to be removed. That's a flawed way of thinking about the problem, going against basic human behavior, so it's a dead end. These comments aren't 'problems' to be solved. Banning casual chit chat will kill any forum. Tsunami-like levels of chit chat are also inevitable because that's just how humans interact online. There is nothing that can be said or explained that will ever override people's natural behaviors. The chit chat is coming, it can't be prevented, but it can be managed.
The tangential comments have value, just not to everyone in the conversation. If you make a good post and get 30 'attaboy' or thank you messages, that's valuable to you, and being able to strike up a separate conversation from something like that also has value if someone asks you for more info or makes an interesting observation in that reply. Now you've found a friend, and you're talking directly to them.
That stuff is still off-topic or noise to everyone else because they aren't the ones having that conversation. I don't need to see the pile of thank-yous that are giving you warm fuzzies, or any tangential conversations those start with you. It's also why comment threads jet up into tens of thousands of comments - this stuff is forced to live in the same thread space as the main discussion. It's by far the majority of the comments on large forums, so disappearing it successfully would be a very big deal. If we can find a way to do that it'll help thread health immensely.
If we can simply disappear the offtopic stuff except to the people involved in those tangents, the conversations are all preserved and the larger discussion gets cleaner for everyone else. There's also no need to create a wall of rules (that no one reads and which will be aggressively ignored) or task mods with the endless busywork of cleaning up threads by applying millions of labels a day across the entire site. Any solution that leads to 'eh, the mods will do everything' is looking for trouble. Give them enough bullshit to wade through and they'll stop modding.
It is impossible to 'tell' people how to communicate. If you build the tools you give them to communicate cleverly, though, you can exert some level of control over whatever particular human behavior that tool is meant to help manage. What's missing is a semi-private reply space for the casual chit chat, one that doesn't treat that stuff with the same mechanics or importance as a top-level comment. If that's there, people will use it, and we can refine it.
It's human behavior distinct enough to merit its own mechanics. Think of every human behavior as a core feature, unavoidable, that needs the right kind of digital prosthetic to become useful/productive. We definitely need to do something that tries to make sense of massive threads or they'll end up here just like they do on reddit, someday.
The whisper thing is fairly common in chat services and MMOs, too. It's not a new idea, it's just never been adapted to function in a thread/comment-chain environment before. I'm kinda curious to see how it evolves and what uses people find for it. If it can help people form more relationships with other users on the site I think that'd be a nice big bonus win for everyone.
So... why not use the existing "offtopic" comment label functionality for this? All we need is to enable people to apply labels to their own comments, then collapse all comments labelled "offtopic", and - Hey, presto! - people can have their chit-chat.
The feature is already in place. It just needs a bit of tweaking to achieve what everyone seems to want.
It requires at least one-click per comment to remove that way. Seems like a lot of busywork for something that really ought to be more like a second, new kind of 'reply' button. Catch it right there, at the top, and then let the rest inherit the off-topic aside-like nature of the whisper mechanic.
Fair point, but I definitely see people just ignore that because "eh, one off-topic comment won't matter" and post anyway.
I'm being fully self-conscious here by the way. I'll try to keep it in mind more, thanks for pointing out.
I know - and then someone else responds to that off-topic comment with another off-topic comment of their own, and then someone else, and someone else... Imagine how much worse it would be if everyone knew they could mark their own comments as "offtopic"!
Me too!
I honestly want to know which post and what topic it is. I am unsure to see where the line is without any concrete hands on examples. I bet other people here have a much better understanding about the potential issue and wont need an explanation as to what it is exactly, and what you are talking about.
What is meta discussion really? I will probably know the answer if given, but i never really looked it up.
Here is the comment chain.
It is about the post itself - for example about the title, or tags - and not about the topic. I’d say it’s anything that would fit more to ~tildes than to the topic itself.
Wasn't surprised to find it was my post, somehow. In any case I'd prefer putting it in the topic since it's still relevant to the topic itself, just not whatever it links to. It feels a little unneccessary to make a whole new topic just to ask if a title can be changed or not.
I'll refer to what I said elsewhere in the thread: make it so users (or at least, me, lol) can tag their own posts as offtopic while making a comment, with a little flip switch or something, which does show up as new but doesn't bump the conversation.
It's not relevant. "Are there any plans of adding topic tags/report buttons?" is a separate, stand-alone topic suitable for posting in ~tildes. A post in ~tildes about this question might include a link to one or more topics as examples, but it's not relevant to those topics.
That are exactly my thoughts. It isn’t general/important enough to belong to a whole new topic, but it doesn’t quite belong to the old topic either, especially if it develops into deep topic title discussion.
Some kind of whisper comment (possibly applying to whole comment thread) would solve it.