🆕Update (Rolled Back) Comments System Beta Now Live

[Zwielicht]

The comments system beta I announced on Tuesday is now live.

Because this system is in beta, you may come across graphics or functionality bugs with it. We did our best to fix any of these issues, but if anyone comes across any, please post about them here.

The reason we wanted to work on this system was to solve an issue that often plagues forums: responses to opening posts often become disorganised and difficult to follow with the default structure. Popular social media sites such as Reddit, YouTube, and Imgur solved this with a very similar system; so we wanted to give it a try here. With this comments system, it should help prevent threads from feeling like they've become off-topic as users will be able to simply scroll past any comments they don't want to bother reading.

How To Start Using Comments
To start this beta off, all members now have access to the comments system. As such, you should see a "Comment" button next to the reply button.

During the beta, members will have a choice between using the comment, reply, and quote button. However, if we determine the beta to be a success, the comment button will replace the reply and quote buttons.

Notes About Comments

1. Signatures do not appear under comments at all. It would just look too messy if we displayed them under any comments.
2. Comments do not bump threads.
3. There's a line between comments leading to the next comment.
4. Reactions work for comments and count toward the user's reaction score.
5. Comments currently only have a depth of 1. Meaning you can comment on posts, but not comment on other comments.
6. Comments only work in threads, not profile posts or DMs.
7. Comments have a depth of 1, meaning you can create comments on posts, but you can't comment on other comments. This may be expanded out in the future and we may even do so during this beta.
8. Comments can't be collapsed at this time. This is something I'd need to work out at a later date.
9. Comment character length is set to 5000 just to start. If this is too short, and it probably is, then just let me know here and I'll increase it.
10. Images, videos, and all the usual functionality should work in the comments.
11. The quote button is disabled for comments only

 

[roydan]

This is cool

 

[Fudge Brownie]

Interesting to be able to comment on the starting thread. I like it still.

 

[shattered world]

Sweet. I'll give it a go on the forum and report back if I find any issues.

 

[SilverClouds]

Okay, let's try

 

[Fudge Brownie]

It looks like there's a bug that comes up on threads where it says there are new replies and then it's just the last post that was posted again? I don't know if it's this new feature or something else but thought I'd let you know anyway.

It says "Messages have been posted since you loaded this page. View them?" and then duplicates the post but when you refresh the page the post is no longer duplicated.

 

[Zwielicht]

I got that, too. I don't think it's a coincidence. It's like that feature is going, but only in this thread from what I can see and only if you start typing in the reply box. I'll keep looking into it.

Edit: It looks like it only comes up in the standard reply box at the bottom of the page and only when a draft is saved.

Edit 2: It's related to the drafts feature from what I can see. I've had to disable drafts for now.

 

[Zwielicht]

Okay, this has been fixed. That message that comes up has just been disabled as I've always found it kind of buggy anyway, but I managed to keep the draft feature on the forum as well.

Let me know if it comes up again.

 

[Zwielicht]

Interesting to be able to comment on the starting thread. I like it still.

I'd argue that's not ideal. I'll most likely look into disabling that.

 

[roydan]

I'd argue that's not ideal. I'll most likely look into disabling that.

There are probably more "small things" that will float around like that because it seems that comments and replies aren't supposed to coexist, are they?

 

[Zwielicht]

They can, but it would just be confusing to the user.

Even if I disabled the reply feature and replaced it with the comments, it wouldn't actually remove the comment button from the opening post. I did look into that earlier and found a way to do it, I found forgot to when I launched the beta.

I'm looking into it again now since members should be responding to opening posts normally and then using comments to respond to those posts. Otherwise, it's like having 2 ways to respond to the opening post at once.