I can’t wait for Art Piles to go live.
There are so many wonderful ideas in this project. New interfaces, ways to sustain the community, privacy…
Okay! :DDD! I can’t help myself! I love solving difficult community problems through interface–it gives me the biggest design hard-on ever. Like, just before FAP closed, there was a huge surge of users…which directly affected the quality of comments on the site.
It always seems like the more popular something becomes the more noise there is to wade through.
Current solutions around the web are comment rating systems for comments (eg, this is a 5-star comment), authority systems for users making comments (like, the more comments you make the higher your rank)…but, these all seem pretty arbitrary. One of my biggest goals was to promote a commentary-rich community through the interface. Commenting was painless, and the resulting comments were laid out to prevent lame comments (my favourite: newest comments on top prevents that stupid “FIRST” comment).
ANYWAY.
One of my favourite new features to improve the quality of comments is inspired by XKCD’s ROBOT3000:
Every comment is unique.
That means there would only be one “FIRST!” one “Thanks for the watch!” one “+fav”. The comments would still post, but they’re ranked lower. More “complex” comments (calculated by length, reading difficulty, emoticon use, spelling, etc) are ranked higher.
Suddenly, good comments aren’t just something you do when you’re bored at 2AM and can’t sleep. If you want to be noticed on the site, you have to articulate. Thoughtful commentators are rewarded. They’re ranked on the leader board as a reward for their contribution to the community.
Competition and attention are the most compelling forces in a community.
Can anyone imagine what would happen if fChan implemented this? Or Youtube?