Ideas
+3
Improvements to Blox commenting system
I would be very interested to hear from other users about improvements they'd like to see to Blox-native commenting. Here are my suggestions so far.
(And to head off the inevitable: I am not switching to Disqus or FB just to get features. This is about improving the Blox system.)
- The ability to moderate comments from the article page, rather than having to go into the Blox back-end.
- "Trusted" commenters or some other sort of ranking system. Trusted commenters would be able to post links without review and their comments would be filtered nearer to the top of a comment list with a "Best Comments" sort order.
- A "Best Comments" sort order, which would be decided by the upvote/downvote system.
- See above: An upvote/downvote system for comments.
- Ability to have clickable links
- See above: Ability to hold comments for moderation if they contain links
- Ability for users to edit their own posts.
- Ability for users to upload images.
- Ability for newsrooms to specify a period after which comments on an article close automatically.
- Ability to show comments already posted AFTER commenting has been disabled, rather than having them all disappear.
- Pipe dream: Real time comments.
- Others?
Customer support service by UserEcho
Michael, great post!
Our readers are comment crazy. We recently completed our move from Zen to Flex and the absolute biggest complaint we got was the loss of an old custom block that pulled comments onto a single page.
We ended up using our custom coding hours from the site transition to have Town News recreate it for us in Flex. You can see it in action here:
http://www.galvnews.com/comments/
Here are the suggestions I'd like to see the most:
• The ability to moderate comments from the article page, rather than having to go into the Blox back-end.
It would be great if the system would allow more admin features from the front end, similar to Wordpress. This would be a great one. Right now our editors have to click the report button to generate an email from the system so that they can then deny the comment that way. Being able to do it right from the front end, especially if they could assign the reason for removal, would be great.
• An upvote/downvote system for comments.
I've actually got a post along these lines already started. I might finish it up and post it as a reply here since they are along the same lines.
• Ability for users to edit their own posts.
This would make users so happy, we get a bunch of replies posted to clarify spelling and auto-correct errors. I'd take this a step further and say that there should be a window for the edit, five or ten minutes, and the post must be clearly marked that it was edited (similar to how it does already if an admin edits a post). Possibly also a place to leave a note about the edit. This is a common feature in some systems.
• Ability for newsrooms to specify a period after which comments on an article close automatically.
Good one.
• Ability to show comments already posted AFTER commenting has been disabled, rather than having them all disappear.
Without a doubt this should be the default behavior of the system.
• Pipe dream: Real time comments.
Readers would love this as well, but I see it as being the biggest technical hurdle in the list.
• Trusted comments, link options, photos...
I could see these being useful, but they'd be lower on my wish list. Photos in particular I bet I'd disable just to avoid a screen full of GIF's.