No more top three comments below story? :(

This topic was created by Jamie Kitson .

  1. Jamie Kitson

    No more top three comments below story? :(

    Are the top three scored comments gone from the bottom of stories forever? I quite liked that feature.

    1. diodesign Silver badge

      Re: No more top three comments below story? :(

      Yup. Gone.

      C.

    2. BigAndos
      FAIL

      Re: No more top three comments below story? :(

      Yeah I came here to say that. I almost missed the link to the comments all together as I assumed the story I was reading was one of those with no comments board!

    3. Antonymous Coward
      Coat

      Killed the golden goose.

      As there's no headstone icon any more -------------------------------------------------------------->

      As far as I'm concerned the vivacious and unusually (in part at least) informed commentard community was the best thing about The Register. It's certainly not the quality:quantity ratio of the articles which seems to be spiralling out of control. Neither is it the increasing frequency of the offensive sponsored infoticles with our replies always carefully "moderated".

      Those forum leaders were the secret sauce. Can't see this ending well for El Reg

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Killed the golden goose.

        Erm, a little calm and sense of perspective might be in order here. All comments are still present and correct. They just haven't got the top few listed, out of context, where the voting becomes a self-reinforcing process. Get the first few, get to be visible, get more afterwards. Not that the voting matters, but the out of context bit does.

        As for getting moderated on advertorial, it depends what you mean. The Reg do run a few sponsored articles, they're normally marked. Just don't read them. I don't blame them for controlling the comments on those, seeing as that's part of how this site is paid for, and the users are getting it free - what's to complain about?

        Unless you're one of those whiners (of which there are many) who call the author a shill when he's nice about a company you don't like. In which case, again, it's their house, their rules (as their forum rules say). I've seen plenty of discussion of products, saying they suck, so I assume that's not too heavily moderated. If people are calling their author's names, then tough shit if they get modded.

    4. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: No more top three comments below story? :(

      I'm glad they killed them. I've seen others post on here to the same effect. Of course, now they have, the people who liked them complain. I guess you can't please all the people all the time...

      My reason for not liking them is that the comments appeared out of context. Also, the first comment to get a few votes would stay on there, and get many more (either up or down), due to being in prime position. Not that I care too much about that, but I've noticed more comments with huge numbers of votes than before - and I suspect that's down to the top comments thingy.

      However, they do seem to have made the link to the comments less prominent in the page design.

      1. Hungry Sean
        Pint

        Re: No more top three comments below story! :-)

        I too am glad this horrible feature has been expunged. The most obnoxious bit was that it would kick in when there were only 5 comments on an article.

        What I *do* think could work would be a "featured comments" but that would need hand selection to get right and probably prompt much whining from those who got more upvotes but were not chosen.

        Beer for the site designers, it's a rough job and any changes will be met with howls of indignation.

  2. Jamie Kitson

    I seem to have lost my bronze badge too :((

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      El Reg have done their badges a slightly odd way, which Drewc said they were thinking of changing. They've set it up to check if you've made 100 posts in the last calendar year - to give the badges, but what computer can give, computer can also take away. So if you fail to post 100 times in a calendar year, then you will be unceremoniously de-frocked.

      A quick check of your posts confirms this. If you click on your username, it lists all the posts under it, and I think they do about 50 to a page. Go to page 2, and the bottom 10 or so are from before August 2012. So you must be a bit under your 100 quota. Get back in those salt mines! The El Reg staff will give you a good whipping, and I'm sure you won't make the same mistake twice...

  3. Russ Tarbox

    I'm not sure I like it.

    I'm far less likely to click the "comments" button. I liked the top three. Gave me an idea of what people were saying on a topic before I clicked through.

    1. Haku

      Re: I'm not sure I like it.

      YesI miss the top 3 comments too, even the out of context ones were interesting because they made me click the comments section to see what it was all about.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon