RaceFans site development

Damon Smedley posts F1 Fanatic’s 400,000th blog comment!

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 15 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #131285

    F1 Fanatic passed a milestone in the small hours of this morning when @damonsmedley posted the 400,000th comment on the site.

    Thanks to him and of course the thousands upon thousands of you who have commented over the years.

    You can read Damon’s landmark comment here (note the ID number has no relevance to the total comment count):

    https://www.racefans.net/2012/04/18/f1-fanatic-roundup-184/#comment-992069

    It’s quite remarkable to think back to the early days of the site and how much it’s grown since then. There was a time when I tried to reply to every comment that was left, which was pretty easy when I got one or two per article.

    Now the most popular articles each much get almost 300, and the biggest stories get double that and more. It’s not unusual to get over a thousand comments per day. And this doesn’t include the forums and F1 Fanatic Live!

    Of course quality matters more than quantity. I want F1 Fanatic to be a positive place for people to discuss F1. Again, that comes back to the quality of comments we get from readers and again I have to thank you all for it.

    This is why we have Comment of the Day to showcase the best comments, and clear rules and guidelines to prevent abuse.

    And thanks must also go to the team behind the anti-spam system Akismet has kept a whopping 2,625,525 spam comments from appearing on the site, the vast majority of which is text automatically spewed out by bots.

    Here’s to the next hundred thousand comments and the big half million!

    #199771
    damonsmedley
    Participant

    I’m happy with that! Surely this has as much prestige as a COTD… Now I have to score the 500 000th comment!

    Question: how many comments were posted last year in total and how many have been posted so far this year? It must be getting close to 100 000 a year now with the site getting so popular.

    #199772

    @damonsmedley That data’s not readily available – I will have a look later, but I’ve got a bit on right now with it being back-to-back races.

    #199773
    Slr
    Participant

    Nice one @damonsmedley – I’m surprised @bascb didn’t get it.

    #199774
    BasCB
    Participant

    LOL @slr, guess it was being there at the right time! Nice one @damonsmedley and great to see how F1Fanatic has grown @Keithcollantine, up to half a million now!

    #199775
    Girts
    Participant

    Damn… I was so close, should have commented more actively today :D

    Seriously, Damon really deserves this award as he has contributed a lot to creating and maintaining a high-class discussion on F1F. That is probably the best thing that F1F has taught to me, namely, that it is possible to have regular and interesting web discussions without getting rude or banal.

    I’m a bit sad that we need to talk so much about politics these days as one of the reasons why I came here was that I wanted to talk about sport, not politics. But I understand that it’s not always possible to avoid politics. We’ll get through this and I’m sure that F1F’s best and most exciting days are still to come.

    #199776
    Estesark
    Participant

    Well done to Damon, and as Keith rightly said, to everyone on F1 Fanatic :)

    #199777

    Hardly suprising when about half of those 400,000 comments are shared between Smedley, BasCB and Prisoner Monkeys. :P

    #199778
    Girts
    Participant
    #199779

    @Girts Why would I be envious? It’s always quality over quantity with me, my friend… ;)

    #199780
    Fer no.65
    Participant

    Congratulations :) !

    As @girts says, this has to go not only to damon but to all of us. F1Fanatic has been my top website for F1 since 2008 and I’ve seen it evolve massively during the years, and the discussion has been improving a lot too. With some exceptions, the respect between users is great and we end up having a nice conversation about the sport we love… though, as @girts says again, nowadays we’re talking too much politics!

    But the discussion wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the excellent quality of articles, analisis and reviews.

    #199781
    Alianora La Canta
    Participant

    Congratulations, @damonsmedley, on being the one to write F1 Fanatic’s 400,000th comment (and a fine one it is too :) )

    Thank you very much, Keith, for making F1 Fanatic such a great place to discuss F1 and for making us think. Also, thanks to all my fellow commentors for the debates, the ideas and the enthusiasm that turns a great blog into a great community :)

    #199782

    the best thing that F1F has taught to me, namely, that it is possible to have regular and interesting web discussions without getting rude or banal.

    I can think of no higher praise. Thank you very much.

    #199783
    damonsmedley
    Participant

    @Girts Award? Deserve? I’m sorry, but you’re completely mad! I also have no idea what you mean when you say I’ve contributed to anything but fair enough, I’ll take it as a compliment even if I don’t understand! :-P

    @Alianora-La-Canta It’s good to see you commenting again recently. You seem to go through phases of not commenting and then being a large part of the discussions I read each day!

    #199784
    Girts
    Participant

    @damonsmedley

    So you don’t think that my idea of creating a Damon Smedley fan club is a bright one?

    By the way, partly answering your question on the number of comments in 2011, this is what Keith wrote in the last article of 2011:

    With over 140,000 comments being published on the site since January 1st, I’ve struggled at times merely to read all of them, let alone reply to everyone.

    But I guess this includes the forum posts & replies, too.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 15 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.