Forum or comments for news posts?

[Tim Colwill]

I'm just chatting with Cozi on Steam atm so I figure I'll give a little bit of background to this.

Basically, when we were making the site, we figured that everyone would be fine with this. It's the same community, the same members, the same avatars (eventually! ) - we thought everyone would be fine with it! Clearly that's not the case, some people are fine with it, some aren't. And that's okay! We're always interested in what people have to say, but in the short term, nothing is going to change. It's too early to tell if we've achieved our goal or not.

What was our goal?

A lot of people probably don't realise that by hiding the community away behind a forum thread away from the main page, we're actually hampering its growth and expansion. Our traffic analysis shows that many people just read articles and then never bother commenting on them, because they can't read the comments and so they've got no interest (or idea?) that a community even exists.

We're keen to see the growth and expansion of the community as it helps us justify requests for more servers, more prizes, and more of the stuff that you come to GON for in the first place.

Secondary concerns for us as a publishing team is that the creation of a forum thread for each news post is a logistical nightmare. For embargoed topics, or when we need to remove an item from the main site, or edit something - it doubles up the work. It's monstrous. We've put up with it so far because it's the only system we had. But now - just today I was able to publish three features in the time it would usually take me to publish and format one. Picture me looking excited. That's how I looked. I was very happy.

This means more content for you, more often and more exposure for the community as a result. We did this because we love the community and want to grow it - not the other way around!

If we find down the line that this isn't working, then we might look at other options. For now, I'd ask you to be patient with us and roll with the new system for a while. There's been months and months of thought and years of traffic analysis behind these changes. After all, it's our jobs on the line if GON doesn't work, so we're pretty invested in this!

Kisses,
Tim

[Mekon]

A lot of people probably don't realise that by hiding the community away behind a forum thread away from the main page, we're actually hampering its growth and expansion. Our traffic analysis shows that many people just read articles and then never bother commenting on them, because they can't read the comments and so they've got no interest (or idea?) that a community even exists.

But... if you segregate the commenting system from the rest of the site, how will said people realise the rest of the community (aka the forums) exists?

Speaking personally, I hit the forums directly. Without posts linking to the articles... I don't know they exist. Yeah, I'm probably using it wrong, but GON was first and foremost a community and the article content was always secondary. Since the change, I haven't actually read a single article/newspost, because they aren't appearing on the forums. I accept I'm not the target market, you're looking for growth, but it's just not working for me. *shrug*

On a plus note, I guess you won't have to put up with my commentary on the content (which I'm sure will make some newsbots much happier).

[Tim Colwill]

I don't understand. How are comments that are directly under a news piece segregated from the rest of the site?

[Mekon]

Because they don't guide people to the forums? There is no link between the content commentary and the backend forums (other than the "Community" menu item), unless I'm missing something.

People will just make a throwaway comment on an article (if that) then move on. I do much the same thing over at RPS - I read the article, browse the comments and never bother reading their forums... because it's segregated. It reinforces lurking behaviour, IMO, rather than encouraging participation.

[Tim Colwill]

But they can't make a throwaway comment without logging in through the forum, so...?

Realistically people are motivated by two things to leave comments - inspiration from the piece itself, or in reply to another commenter. We've always done one but struggled with the other. If we can expose the comments quickly to the user, we increase the chance they'll sign up and post just to join the discussion.

Every time somebody reads the comments it increases the chance they'll sign up. Every time somebody signs up it increases the chance they'll join the community and post in the forums. If they don't read the comments, and aren't motivated to join in, then they won't.

Is it perfect? Nope. Is it better than before? We think so, yes.

[Snootle]

Since it's not going to change as you say, I just hope you refine it further because when navigating to previous comments etc it just feels a bit confusing, perhaps implement a sorting option too (newest or oldest first) and show how many comments out of the total are being shown at one time etc. If you want to take it further you can add a rating system and allow people to sort comments by highest rating as well.

Just some ideas.

[Otto-matic]

A compromise - why can't we have both?

For the forum keep it simple. No stickies (let the discussion popularity sort it out), just each news post gets a thread with same title and a link in the first post to the actual article. Shouldn't be too hard to automate. If you want you can also link back to the forums from the article. This way people can leave basic comments, but they are tempted to delve further.

[Makena]

A compromise - why can't we have both?

For the forum keep it simple. No stickies (let the discussion popularity sort it out), just each news post gets a thread with same title and a link in the first post to the actual article. Shouldn't be too hard to automate. If you want you can also link back to the forums from the article. This way people can leave basic comments, but they are tempted to delve further.

The downfall of that is a lot of the current forum users would never use the short/quicker comment system, and instead only use the forum side of it, which doesn't help draw new visitors into the community via article comments.

[diamondd]

But... if you segregate the commenting system from the rest of the site, how will said people realise the rest of the community (aka the forums) exists?

I agree with this.

How about displaying the three most recent comments underneath the article as they are at the moment, with a "Continue the discussion in the forums!..." link underneath.

That way you can see that stuff is happening, and get involved properly in the forum.

As for people in the past reading articles and not going to the comments, that would mostly be down to the tiny un-obvious forum link...

[Mekon]

But they can't make a throwaway comment without logging in through the forum, so...?

Perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes, but... you login via the header bar (which has a "Register" button for new users). Not once do you ever hit the forums unless you happen to click on the "Community" menu item. There is no cross-over other than there being an overall site login, which applies to both the comments system and the forums.

What will encourage new users to come and visit the rest of the community?

[tacitus42]

That's not bad reasoning there, Tim. I believe what you say as you're one of the ones who has been thinking about this the most. And kudos for being a very active part of the talk around the new site!
I think the bad thing right now is that people can only make throw-away comments on the articles because we're not notified when someone else makes a post after our own one.
The 'view my posts' thing was what I looked at most, I'm always commenting on articles I'm really interested in, and so when someone else chimes in, and it notifies me there are new posts I jump right on it and the discussion keeps going.

[Tim Colwill]

What will encourage new users to come and visit the rest of the community?

A fair point. We can certainly do something about that. But look at it this way:

Under the old system, if you weren't already a part of games.on.net's community, you wouldn't know it was there at all. The 'Forums' link was even tinier and buried in a cluttered top menu. You had no incentive to join it at all unless you specifically wanted to.

Now when you read the site, you can see the community in action and there's more of a chance you'll be motivated to join to be a part of it. So like I said - is it perfect? No. But it's better, we think.

How about displaying the three most recent comments underneath the article as they are at the moment, with a "Continue the discussion in the forums!..." link underneath.

This would be impossible as the comments come from the Wordpress database, so we'd have to cap Wordpress's comments at three, then generate a forum topic automatically, then link it to that Wordpress article? Unless I'm misunderstanding. But this illustrates the logistical nightmare of forum topic generation.

For the forum keep it simple. No stickies (let the discussion popularity sort it out), just each news post gets a thread with same title and a link in the first post to the actual article. Shouldn't be too hard to automate. If you want you can also link back to the forums from the article. This way people can leave basic comments, but they are tempted to delve further.

Again, we run into the same problem. Sure, we can create a forum thread. But then what if we remove or edit that news post? We have to go into the forum manually and change the content of the post, or delete it entirely.

Additionally, we would then be splitting the community into two with essentially two separate comment threads in two different databases. This seems counter-productive!

I just hope you refine it further because when navigating to previous comments etc it just feels a bit confusing, perhaps implement a sorting option too (newest or oldest first) and show how many comments out of the total are being shown at one time etc. If you want to take it further you can add a rating system and allow people to sort comments by highest rating as well.

Just some ideas.

We're certainly going to refine it further - whatever it takes to get people on board with it, are things we will look at doing.

That's not bad reasoning there, Tim. I believe what you say as you're one of the ones who has been thinking about this the most. And kudos for being a very active part of the talk around the new site!
I think the bad thing right now is that people can only make throw-away comments on the articles because we're not notified when someone else makes a post after our own one.
The 'view my posts' thing was what I looked at most, I'm always commenting on articles I'm really interested in, and so when someone else chimes in, and it notifies me there are new posts I jump right on it and the discussion keeps going.

Thanks, and no worries - it's our job to think about this 40 (more like 50) hours a week!

As above, if we need to make changes to get it to work for our users, we'll do that. And we do appreciate all suggestions! You will not be ignored, and I appreciate anybody who has taken the time to read my posts.

[Makena]

Regarding news posts too, is there any thought given to how many news stories you can see from the main page? Only seeing half of the first news post at 1200 vertical res, seems rather counter intuitive for easily reading the news stories

[diamondd]

How about displaying the three most recent comments underneath the article as they are at the moment, with a "Continue the discussion in the forums!..." link underneath.

This would be impossible as the comments come from the Wordpress database, so we'd have to cap Wordpress's comments at three, then generate a forum topic automatically, then link it to that Wordpress article? Unless I'm misunderstanding. But this illustrates the logistical nightmare of forum topic generation.

I was thinking more along the lines of comments being made and "existing" solely on the forum, then you just rip the three (random number, more might be better?) most recent ones from there and display them under the article. So you only need the usernames and text content and then you can do what you like with it.

There would be a bit of legwork involved but it shouldn't be too hard. That way you're providing a glimpse (hopefully an enticing one) of the discussion going on, but all that discussion is contained on the forum. Importantly, where we are better equipped to discuss things.

[Mythor]

I prefer forum posts because it gives more room for discussions, some of which end up quite interesting.
But failing that, threaded comments are great, rather than quoting and repeating the same text down the page your reply appears right underneath.

There used to be a wordpress-phpbb bridge plugin that would create a thread in phpbb and use that for the comments in an article (including a counter on the article) but I'm pretty sure it stopped being maintained in favour of running single software designed for the purpose or a plugin that provides the "missing" feature, like a forum for WP or a blog style system for phpBB.

Pulling comments from an existing thread could probably be done but it'd be a custom code job and no substitute for the normal comments section.
Maybe, if it's a game we have a forum/servers for, a link could be put into the news post? Just something simple like [ Battlefield Forum / Battlefield Servers ] for people who might like to know more? This would be in addition to the usual post tags or file links or what have you.