AnnArbor.com introduces new commenting features, including ability to 'vote down' comments
We understand what kinds of conversation our readers find valuable, and we are about to get a better indication of what kinds they don't.
We're adding some new features to our commenting system today, including the ability to let readers "vote down'' comments.
These changes are part of our ongoing efforts to encourage a conversation on our site that is lively, but also reasonably civil and constructive. Here's an overview of what's new:
Voting on comments. Readers have been able to "vote up'' comments since we last reworked our commenting system in January 2011. We're now adding the ability to vote comments down as well. This will allow readers to record both their pleasure and displeasure over the tenor of the conversation. As readers vote on a comment, it will receive a cumulative score. For instance, a comment that three readers vote up and two readers vote down would have a score of 1. A comment is voted up by three people and voted down by five people would have a score of -2.
Registering to vote on comments. If you want to vote a comment up or down, you will now have to be registered on the site in order to do so. Until now, we've allowed readers to vote on comments without registering. But particularly now that both voting up and voting down is allowed, we feel that registration is appropriate to ensure that a user only votes once.
Most popular comments. One of the changes our readers are most likely to notice is that we're doing away with the feature that highlights the three most popular comments posted on a story. We know many people like this feature, but since we added it to the site, it's significantly increased load time for pages, slowing down our site to a degree that neither we nor our readers find acceptable. That's been a bad trade-off for us, and we've decided to do away with the Most Popular comment module. However, you can still view the most popular comments if you want to. Comments display on the site in the order of oldest to newest, but you can change that to sort by most popular. We've made the drop-down menu for that more prominent, so it's easier to find and use.
Pre-moderation on crime stories: This also is a significant change for us. Our normal practice is to post-moderate, which means that comments appear on the site as submitted and are taken down by a moderator after the fact if the comment violates our guidelines. At times recently, we've put certain crime stories on pre-moderation, so that comments do not appear on the site until a moderator approves them. We're taking that a step further now. All crime stories will automatically be on pre-moderation. When we look at inappropriate commenting on the site, it tends to occur disproportionately on crime stories. Pre-moderation is a tool that can help us control and clean up that conversation. Depending on how this experiment goes, we may expand the use of pre-moderation to other stories or areas of the site in the future.
Other new features include the ability to share your comments on Facebook.
We have always worked hard to encourage a good conversation on our site, and like any media company, we have found that to be a continual challenge. Our entire industry continues to grapple with the dilemma of how to encourage a vigorous conversation without allowing the discourse to degenerate into an ugly, acrimonious scrum.
Different media outlets are trying different solutions, and in the coming months, we will be experimenting with some new approaches that we have in development right now. We look forward to rolling those out. In the meantime, we welcome your input on the changes we're introducing today. Please let us know what you think.
Comments
Peter
Tue, Mar 20, 2012 : 4:07 p.m.
I like the new look, and the quality of the discourse on the site does seem to have improved. Thumbs up from me.
kraiford12
Tue, Mar 20, 2012 : 3:39 p.m.
I really do not like the new layout of the comment section. The width of the text box is much too narrow making a comment that should only be 3-4 lines in height more like 6-7 (not sure if that makes sense). Ontop of that, the font size is much too large, it's larger than the stories font size! I have my screen on a higher than normal (from what I've seen of most computer users, and I work IT) resolution and am only able to fit 4-5 comments on a screen, and that's only if they are under 4 lines in length. Maybe people really like the new layout. Don't get me wrong, it LOOKS nice. The colors, buttons, etc. It's just the layout that seems clunky and big. I would suggest adding more width to the comments textbox/div (html)/ or whatever is used and bringing down the font size a bit. I shouldn't have to scroll for 5 min's to reach the bottom of a story with 20 comments.
Tony Dearing
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 12:11 p.m.
We are hearing from many people who post a comment and get a message saying that the message is hidden because they've "submitted an abuse report against it.'' This is a bug that we are working to correct as quickly as we can. Please ignore the message. Your comment will display properly on the site.
Tru2Blu76
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 11:10 a.m.
Who "rolled out" this (appended to my every comment this past 24 hours): "This comment is hidden because you have submitted an abuse report against it."?? Is there a way to get rid of this erroneous "hiding" due to something I'm very unlikely to do to my own comment?! Also - a feature I'd love would be to have an "edit" button to correct errors before posting. I DO think that having an "Abuse" button as well as voting up or down is useful in eliminating the inevitable... "ugly, acrimonious scrum." And - some way to remotely taze Ohio State and MSU trolls would be super!! LOL!
Basic Bob
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 10:58 a.m.
This comment is hidden because you have submitted an abuse report against it.
Russ Miller
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 5:47 a.m.
@Tony Dearing "Beyond the technical issues, we also believe philosophically that a comment posted on the site should remain on the site as submitted as a permanent record of the discussion as it occurred. Commenting is, in a way, a live chat, and once you've said something, you've said it. We don't agree with the concept that people should be able to go back in later and revise the conversation, even their own contribution to it." I'm somewhat sympathetic to that position, but in the case of this publication it's completely undermined by the frequent, and often multiple, revisions that your staff makes to the original articles. Even thoughtful comments can be turned into gibberish.
Craig Lounsbury
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 3:19 p.m.
I'll add the irony of their exuberant use of the delete button on comments.
Unusual Suspect
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 2:03 p.m.
I agree with this. The strange practice of revising articles in-place, instead of adding updates to them, can make pre-edit comments confusing and irrelevant, which is exactly what you're telling us is not a good thing. Be consistent - either decide editing of information in-place is useful, or decide it's not.
Goofus
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 12:02 a.m.
To northside...if you consider this to be "newspaper"...sigh..
JRW
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 11:59 p.m.
Well, that was interesting. I just posted a comment and received a message that the comment was hidden since I reported it as abuse. How strange is that! I didn't report my comment as abuse so I have no idea what is going on with the site. I'll see what happens with this comment.
Craig Lounsbury
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 3:15 p.m.
that is an ongoing glitch that several of us suffer.
JRW
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 11:57 p.m.
I tried commenting using Opera on a PC and it doesn't work. I was not able to click on the comment box when logged in. Chrome seems to work fine. I haven't tried Firefox or IE. As far as the new policies, I think they are generally a good idea. The crime stories have had a lot of nasty or inappropriate comments so pre-moderation is a good idea. I do think, however, that if all comments were pre-moderated, it would decrease participation. Voting up or down is fine as long as voting down doesn't become a way for people to easily attack posters when their viewpoint is controversial. Personal attacks need to be stopped one way or the other. The forum should be an exchange of ideas. Suggestions: (1) Allow for editing comments. I can't think of any forum where I post that doesn't allow editing. (2) Also, there is too much white space on the left side of the screen. It would be better to have the comments centered and a wider text line. The font is huge and could be smaller. Anyone who need a larger font can change it on their personal screen. (3) It would also be helpful to be able to quote from a comment, rather than having to copy and paste.
David Cahill
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 6:43 p.m.
I don't have the font problem. I'm using an iMac.
Tony Dearing
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 6:38 p.m.
Some people are reporting that they are not able to reply to a comment. This is an issue that's caused by the registration system on our site. Sometimes, the system logs you out, but makes it appear that you're still logged in. When that happens, the reply button won't display, so you can't reply. To solve that, you have to log out and then log back in again. We're working on improving our registration system so that this no longer occurs, but until we get that fixed, you can address the problem by logging out and logging back in.
Unusual Suspect
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 8:55 p.m.
Well, fix it, then! It's been that way since this thing was first created. One part of the page says you're logged in, another part says you're not. There are at least two different login pages, which sometimes work and sometimes doesn't work.... enter username, enter password, press "login," too bad, you're still not logged in. Sometimes your own comment, with only 1 or 2 votes, makes it on the list of top comments, while there are several others with dozens more votes. You are surrounded in this town by some extremely capable software developers, but when you killed the newspaper and went online you came up with nothing but an ugly, unreadable blog. Do it right or don't do it.
shutthefrtdoor
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 8:14 p.m.
Good job Tony! This is working as well as expected for the short time it has been active.
GirlNextDoor
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 6:29 p.m.
Tony, I can't seem to reply to someone, who replied to one of my own posts. I don't know if this has been pointed out; I didn't see it, but I also didn't expand all the replies in this thread. Thx
Roadman
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 6:18 p.m.
Font is WAAAAYY too big! If it not downsized, there will be long, long threads that will make it difficult to locate specific posts.
YpsiVeteran
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 5:53 p.m.
Overall I like the new functionality. I definitely agree the font is too big, and hope that can be changed. I also think that being able to delete your own comments is desirable, as you could then correct for a stray typo and re-post. It's my understanding that the Vote up/down buttons are to be used to indicate agreement or disagreement with the sentiment in a post, not whether the post contributes to the discussion overall. Is that accurate? All posts contribute to the discussion. The total Voter Score then is a snapshot of the prevailing attitudes of the readers who are logged in.
DBH
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 9:53 p.m.
Yeah, Tony, good luck with that!
Tony Dearing
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 6:51 p.m.
The "vote down'' function is not intended as a means to punish someone for saying something that other people disagree with. It's a way to express disapproval of the comment, not disagreement with it.
Tony Dearing
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 4:43 p.m.
Thanks for the observations so far. Please keep them coming. A few general responses. We appreciate the feedback about the appearance, font size, etc. This is a different look. We'll give it a little time for users to adjust to it, and then consider design changes as necessary. On the issue of being able to open all replies at once, the system does not offer us that functionality, and while we know there are people who would like that capability, it would require too much re-engineering to pull off. We also have gotten many requests over time to give users the ability to edit or delete their comments. We certainly understand the desire of someone who just posted a comment and would like to jump back in and fix a typo they didn't notice until after they hit submit. But again, the system isn't designed to allow that. Beyond the technical issues, we also believe philosophically that a comment posted on the site should remain on the site as submitted as a permanent record of the discussion as it occurred. Commenting is, in a way, a live chat, and once you've said something, you've said it. We don't agree with the concept that people should be able to go back in later and revise the conversation, even their own contribution to it.
GirlNextDoor
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 5:14 p.m.
@bunny: I noticed, by accident this morning, that when you hover over the Voter Score area, it does show you the number of votes up and votes down, which results in a net Score that is shown.
bunnyabbot
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 4:57 p.m.
day two tony, font size is still too big, I am still not use to it. another commentor said there is too much veritcle white space on the left mostly, but on both sides, this doesn't help when reading the big font, it's like staring at the sun. most peoples screens have smaller fonts for their browser page and search boxes and links, so I would think most people are more use to fonts that more closely match those. I also don't like how if I mouse over a users profile it pops up automatically. Instead of voter score there should be number of ups and number of downs listed so people can see how many times a comment was voted on in total.
Goofus
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 12:05 a.m.
So it's ok for a comment to "remain on the site as part of the permanent record of discussion as it occurred" except for when your overzealous censors decide to block or delete it, eh Tony? What a double standard. This forum is becoming less and less worthy of any contribution of any decent user-generated content.
DBH
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 10 p.m.
Tony, for my part, I like the larger font, though I think the font for these comments and replies as they are being typed is pretty small and will make it even more difficult for commenters to recognize their typing errors before submitting (see below). Regarding an Edit Button or an optional Delete Button, as I have posted elsewhere in the past, I remain perplexed why this is a problem for some commenters. You look at the comment after you post and find an error; why not just peruse it carefully BEFORE you post to find the same error?
colvina
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 4:38 p.m.
Commenters should be required to give their REAL names, as the print version of the Ann Arbor News used to do. Mine is Anne Colvin.
Doug
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 2:51 a.m.
I disagree strongly. Anonymity, for all its faults, promotes candor. Were it not for anonymity, there'd be no news leaks, journalists would not get info from unidentified folks who "speak on the condition of anonymity," and we'd never have heard about Watergate and countless other scandals.
shutthefrtdoor
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 8:11 p.m.
feel free...why don't you change it then? It looks like an alias to me...
cornelius McDougenschniefferburgenstein jr. 3 esq.
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 5:50 p.m.
my exact sentiments sir.
MIKE
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 4:50 p.m.
How do I know that's your real name?
ChrisW
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 4:30 p.m.
Two more comments: 1. There's too much vertical whitespace in the new system. 2. I really dislike the "hover" popup, where accidentally hovering the pointer over someone's icon pops up a big, ugly, usually empty, window.
northside
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:51 p.m.
I think the changes are positive. Requiring registration in order to click like ends the silly 'like wars,' where people would clear their cache and click like dozens (or in some cases, hundreds) of times. It'll be interesting to see how many 'likes' the top posts get now that the system is more honest.
Bob Needham
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:40 p.m.
Alan Goldsmith -- the comments you reference have not been blocked. Since the upgrade overnight, some users are experiencing a problem in that they cannot see their own comments, but everyone else can. (Several people above have mentioned this.) We don't know how widespread this is, but we're working to fix it.
Alan Goldsmith
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:57 p.m.
Thanks Bob. It only seems to be appearing on comments relating to the Mayor, or 'art' comments or something of a political nature and was troubling. Thanks for the update.
treetowncartel
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:50 p.m.
At least every body feels wanted at work today then. good luck!
treetowncartel
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:40 p.m.
It seems like it would make more sense to tally the total yeas and nays. The new method doesn't reveal the amount of votes a comment received to get the number that is revealed. Although truth be told, i'm not even sure why there is voting on comments, especially when you can vote on your own comment. Has any body seen the Ghost? I miss him almost as much as I miss Ed.
Alan Goldsmith
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:07 p.m.
This comment is hidden because you have submitted an abuse report against it. Hide Details "@Chase, "substandard lifestyles" are to blame? By your logic, Ann Arbor should ban all smoking and alcohol use, kick out everyone except rich, white middle-age folks and things would be peachy?" I thought that was the Mayor's campaign platform. Another of my comments reported as 'abuse'? Lol.
Alan Goldsmith
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:03 p.m.
Congrats on making your comment sections as toothless, politician friendly and white bread wimpy as the rest of your 'news' coverage, which is admittedly weighed towards stories that pull in the most 'hits'. Still waiting for the hard hitting journalism you promised with AnnArbor.com's debut. I'm sure Ann Arbor's Mayor is dancing in the street this forum will no longer be a thorn in his side as it has in the past. I invite the Mayor's buddies, members of the DDA, the 'arts' community and others to vote down this comment, report it for abuse and make me an example of this brave new change of policy. Lol.
cornelius McDougenschniefferburgenstein jr. 3 esq.
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 5:47 p.m.
if this were a crime story youd have been pre moderated,your teetering close to the edge of thier censorship cliff.tread carefully.(p.s. i gaveyou a thumbs up.
northside
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:55 p.m.
Alan how do the changes make the comments section 'toothless?' The only change in terms of substance is pre-moderation of comments on crime stories. Unless I'm missing something, everything else seems pretty much the same. Requiring people to register before clicking like is a great change. It'll end the silly 'like wars,' in which regulars cleared out their cache and clicked like a zillion times. The 'most popular' comments section that appeared at the top was very deceptive, as it often just highlighted comments from the cache cleaners.
bunnyabbot
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:50 p.m.
Adding the ability to edit or delete ones own comments would also be nice.
zanzerbar
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 6:06 p.m.
@corny....ever given any thought to shorten it?
cornelius McDougenschniefferburgenstein jr. 3 esq.
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 5:42 p.m.
on the other hand does my name really need three lines?
johnnya2
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 4:12 p.m.
I disagree. If somebody responds to your post, you should be forced to live with it. Edit yourself before you post, and you will not have this issue. Somebody who replies to a post that has been edited is unfair to their response.
bunnyabbot
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:48 p.m.
I noticed the change late last night, the first thing I noticed was the new font size is kinda hard on the eyes! I wish it were a bit smaller, closer to the font size of the article. As big as it is only about two comments can fit on the screen so there is a lot more scrolling involved (does this makes it more to load as well?). I also wish that replies to comments would automatically be expanded or there was a way to click at the top of all the posts to open up all replies for the entire board. The Voter Score and voting icons would also look better if they were not grey but black. The font size though really attributes the most to making it look "busy". I don't see what the advantage is to making the comment size so darn big.
Alan Goldsmith
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:42 p.m.
Ah, so THIS comment is hidden because "you have submitted an abuse report against it. Where I suggest Ann Arbor taxpayers should be getting an 'arts' award for funding City projects?" "How about Ann Arbor Taxpayers? this comment on the AAPAC story is hidden because of an 'abuse' complaint?" Lol.
David Cahill
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:26 p.m.
I like these changes a lot! I'm particularly encouraged to see pre-moderation on the crime stories. Hopefully you will pre-moderate more in the future. I'm tired of the comments being dominated by bizarre negativity.
Tony Dearing
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 4:31 p.m.
Pre-moderation has several advantages. The first is that if a comment is extremely inappropriate, it never appears on the site, rather than sitting on the site until a moderator sees it and removes it. Pre-moderation also alerts the moderator that the story is sensitive and may be more likely to generate inappropriate comments, so those stories get watched more closely. Also, there's a delay -- sometimes lengthy -- before pre-moderated comments get approved, and some commenters who have been placed on pre-moderation have improved their behavior and worked their way back to regular status so that they could return to posting immediately like everyone else.
Alan Goldsmith
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:37 p.m.
Then you need to put pre-moderation on all stories involving the Mayor or City Council to avoid offending them as well.
A2centsworth
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:12 p.m.
What is the point of pre-moderation? What may seem bizarre to one is not necessarily bizarre to others. I would rather see honest remarks and know what people are really thinking, than commentary that is filtered and watered down. When that happens we lose truth, and without truth, what is the use of commenting? I think some of this responsibility must lie on the reporters who skew stories and make mountains out of molehills. They way they report does generate certain responses. Maybe they should be more neutral as well....
UlyssesWrong1
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:22 p.m.
Unfortunately on most stories here there are trends with the commenting and voting based on the audience who read news on the site. The comments sections on many stories are almost worthless for me except to confirm which direction most of the registered users and commenters are leaning towards. It is funny to see articles that try hard to be neutral but clearly have slants then end up with a comments section full of users who side with the article's biases. And even if the author is trying his best to be neutral it is simple to forecast the response via comments a story would receive. There's a miniature community which seems to develop on news site comments sections, and it's a pretty interesting dynamic.
Craig Lounsbury
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 11:06 a.m.
make up your mind, is the comment section worthless or an interesting dynamic?
ChrisW
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:16 p.m.
I still want an option to automatically expand all replies so I don't have to click on each one individually.
DBH
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:50 p.m.
I never thought about that but I agree that would save some unneeded work.
A2centsworth
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:15 p.m.
The same thing is happening to my comments as is happening to Eep's. I can see everyone elses comments but mine are hidden and it indicates I have send an abuse report regarding my own comments. The new programming is still a bit glitchy I suspect. I do like the new "look" of the comment area and I am sure the glitches will be ironed out. Thanks,
A2centsworth
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:43 p.m.
Yet unlike facebook, we still cannot delete our own comments once we have posted them, and the seemingly arbitrary way they censor comments seems very "big brotherish". If you are going to allow comments, allow all of them. Point of fact is most time when comments are negative it is because of how the story is portrayed by the reporter, who is censoring these reporters? Oh yea, freedome of speech.... Let's face it, most of these reporters here are scratching around for something to publish and not always finding diamonds.. know what I mean? If a reporter is going to publish rubbish, and supposedly people are allowed to post comments, well, then it should be an open forum. The whole idea that this is a public newspaper.. freedom of speech and all that, yet comments are censored is an oxymoron.
A2centsworth
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:11 p.m.
Tony, making a statement that "Our readership want us to moderate comments", leads me to ask Can you give me more information on your "readership" what is the percentage that want censorship? age? demographics? How did you query them? How many actual unique users indicated they wanted you to take away all "the bad things"?
Tony Dearing
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:03 p.m.
Our readership does want us to moderate comments, our guidelines are based on feedback from the community. We're always glad to discuss our moderation policies and decisions, and concerns about moderation can be posted here: http://www.annarbor.com/about/annarborcom-conversation-guidelines-comment-moderation/
Geoff Larcom
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:42 p.m.
These appear to be interesting and constructive steps in what's understandably a learning process. May these changes help generate the kind of issue-oriented debates Ann Arbor is capable of – a degree of depth where you log off the site and feel you really learned something from the comment section.
Usual Suspect
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:33 p.m.
Next time perhaps the system should be tested before taking it live. And for accuracy, test it with accounts and computers that are not your own and are not even at your own location.
Mike Hulsebus
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:24 p.m.
Hooray! I think this really adds a lot! You might want to add some sort of reddit-style disclaimer or something somewhere on community guidelines that specifies you should downvote comments that you don't think add anything to the conversation, not comments that you don't agree with.
shutthefrtdoor
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 8:01 p.m.
I disagree...you have an abuse button for that. What's the sense if you can't vote it down when you don't agree???!!! That's the whole premise.
say it plain
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 6:03 p.m.
Yeah, but who will pay attention to that?!
Tony Dearing
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:58 p.m.
Good point. We'll address that.
smokeblwr
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:15 p.m.
This is bad news for me.
trespass
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1 p.m.
So now the UM public relations department can vote down the comments they don't like. Sounds like a great idea.
Basic Bob
Fri, Mar 16, 2012 : 11:07 a.m.
If they figure out how to clear the cache in the browser, they can vote over and over. Or they can get an intern to write a script. Press a button, subtract one hundred.
say it plain
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 6:02 p.m.
I know, isn't it ridiculous? What does it add to the 'conversation'? What is the argument for it? It seems to me it actually might discourage 'voices' and, like Facebook itself fosters, encourage merely passive thumbs-up/thumbs-down "commentary". Blech.
Usual Suspect
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:14 p.m.
As can City Council and the AAPAC.
lisasimpson
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:37 p.m.
Glad it saved all the old comments.
EyeHeartA2
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:28 p.m.
Well, it looks like I got a new lease on life, as all my old comments excpt one appear to be deleted. Can this be fixed?
shutthefrtdoor
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 7:59 p.m.
too funny Craig and ILUVAA2
cornelius McDougenschniefferburgenstein jr. 3 esq.
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 5:33 p.m.
WHY did you tell them,ugggghhhhh.
EyeHeartA2
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 2:12 p.m.
Thanks Tony; So, I guess I need to stop payment on that check to Craig? I was wondering about that....
Tony Dearing
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:14 p.m.
All previous comments should continue to appear. We'll look into this.
Craig Lounsbury
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:34 p.m.
I deleted them. I will repost them at the rate of 12 cents apiece. ...;)
Eep
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:07 p.m.
Tony, When I look at a story that I've commented on, I can see everyone else's comments, but my own have been replaced with "This comment is hidden because you have submitted an abuse report against it." I can assure you that I haven't submitted any abuse reports against my own comments. I think something is wrong with this new system.
Ypsi_Wings_Fan
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 10:56 p.m.
yup same here
shutthefrtdoor
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 7:58 p.m.
I agree...I haven't reported anyone...especially my self! well...maybe once...but a looong time ago. : )
Halter
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 7:36 p.m.
Same thing on my comments...apparently your new system thinks I am submitting abuse complaints about my own posts
Craig Lounsbury
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:33 p.m.
I've noticed that too. It precludes me from commenting on comments to my comments...seriously
Tony Dearing
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:14 p.m.
Thanks for pointing out this problem. We'll take a look at it immediately.
Hmm
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:06 p.m.
Lipstick on a pig
shutthefrtdoor
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 7:56 p.m.
I see the "vote down" option is already paying off!
Hmm
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:07 p.m.
Ok that was harsh, you guys are at least trying to do something so I have to give you credit for that. If you really want to be helpful, make it so we can edit out posts for grammar, spelling or content.
Goofus
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 12:02 p.m.
I find it ironic that A2dotcom has given us the ability to share our comments on Facebook as Facebook does not moderate comments or censor for content, whereas A2dotcom does so with gusto.
shutthefrtdoor
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 7:55 p.m.
Just as long as AA.com doesn't go exclusively FB I'm fine with the changes. I still would like an edit button for spelling and erasing something said in haste.
Harry
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 5:14 p.m.
Facebook sucks. I dont care if you are going to bed or just got home from the store. If I want to talk to you I will call you. And vice versa.
northside
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 3:56 p.m.
This is a newspaper, Facebook is a social networking site.
Greg M
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:42 p.m.
Not quite: http://gawker.com/5885714/
Usual Suspect
Thu, Mar 15, 2012 : 1:36 p.m.
The Firefox add-in AdBlock Plus makes this blog actually readable. With the help of the AdBlock Element Hiding Helper, you can also hide things like all the Facebook junk.