F1 Fanatic

Hi everyone,

I wanted to get your thoughts on how comments are working on the site.

Do you read them? Do you post them? How do you think they compare in quality to comments on other sites?

Should more be done to block off-topic comments and comments from ‘trolls’?

What’s good and what’s bad about comments on F1 Fanatic?

Please share your thoughts below.

I’m not looking for suggestions on how to improve comments from a technical perspective, e.g. having an ‘edit’ facility for comments, these improvements are already planned to come on the site in the future.

Thanks for you time,

Keith

Hey Keith,

I think the comments are really good as they are. Sure sometimes there are heated debates which can go on but this is only because most people here are passionate about Formula 1.

I know you said you’re not looking technical suggestions, however, the only one I would suggest at this time is some sort of live comments update. So instead of being subscribed to the email responses which is sometimes hard to follow if there are alot of comments, it would be a nicety if new comments just appeared below previous comments.

Keep up the good work :)

Cheers
Stephen

On the question of do you read the comments.

Yes, sort of. If there is something like 20 or 30 comments then I will read them but if there are anymore then that I don’t bother. And that kind of discorages me from posting because I then think “if I’m not going read the post after 30 – 40 then other proberbly arn’t either.” But that’s just me.

The way that people can respond directly underneath an early comment and have a long discussion means that even the 5th or 6th indivdual reply can get bumped off to the second page which is annoying – an ‘expand’ function would be easier and would make replying to early posts for the sake of getting on the first page less appealing.

That’s interesting… hadn’t thought of that. Cheers Matt.

I’ve skimmed the other replies, so apologies if I repeat something here.

Generally I think the comments are great, work really well, and promote great discussions about the topic, easy to add your point and follow. I think some other forums overcomplicate adding comments which puts you off and the simplicity of this solution works very much in its favour, especially if you’re using a smartphone on the train or something.

Suggestions, that are not necessary, but as you are asking…

1. I think this has already been suggested but, being able to choose between displaying the comments as conversation threads (as current), or just a list by date/time would be great. It sometimes is difficult to know what has recently been added.

2. Ability to preview your comments, with the markup processed, before submitting. This would help prevent errors as, with the open nature of these comments compared to the forum, I imagine it is more difficult to identify for edit after.

3. Previously you were able to use buttons to add markup making it really easy. It’s not an issue for me being a developer, but maybe for some others this would help.

I adore the comments. It’s the second best thing on this site (first being the articles).

I like how you can post a comment and not wait for it to be modded. I think we’ve pretty much all seen trolls here or some very ott comments but I think we’re sensible enough to ignore until Keith deals with them which he always does so and very swiftly too. I’m not too bothered about trolls then. The site will just keep growing so there will be more but the method of dealing with them now I think is spot on.

It’s a really superb community here. I’d say the best out of any F1 site including JA’s. On an article I can recognise msot people’s usernames when the leaver comments and generally even know who they support.

I do take time to read most if not all of the comments (it just depends on how much time I have) because it can bring a new angle/position on issues and generally people here are very balanced (although there are a few very, very pro-Hamilton fans and the odd Massa nutter :P ) and there’s always going to a bit of bias anyway.

I don’t mind off-topic comments if it’s just replying to another commenter. It can mean looking at something we maybe missed etc and now the forum’s back it can just be carried out there instead of pages and pages on the articles.

I also really enjoy how we have the option to comment on any article. It’s a huge privilege we have but I’m all for free speech and like to read what everyone has to say.

I posted around 5 comments a day on an article. If it’s a uni day then it generally goes up :P

I think the comments are great, they keep me distracted at work most days so that’s a good thing. I get alerted of all the new comments via email. One thing that would be awesome if actually possible is a different type of email that alerts you when someone responds to your earlier comment. That way it would be easy to keep track of what other people think of your comment, whether they agree / disagree or whatever. I think it would further add to the value of the already valuable comments.

It’s always good fun when a caption competition breaks out, so I wonder if more attention could be drawn to the comments on pictures – say a number in brackets after each caption that links to its comments.

It’s nice to be able to comment on an individual photo, but I wonder if anyone ever reads these.

And how about limiting the length on individual comments – or paragraphs? ;)