WP Central Community Upgrade

[dorianlive827]

Hello Windows Phone Central,

I have been a user for a short period of time now on WP Central. I love the overall experience of the News, Reviews, Videos, Merchandise and many other features on WP Central. As a consist user the digest that WP Central provides is excellent for myself and many other consumers via Web and WP Central's app.

While my short time of using WP Central I noticed that the community and social features are the poorest function on WP Central. As a user to other various of news, phones and electronic digest websites such as IGN, PhoneArena, Tech Crunch, Cnet mainly and a few others the social function on WP Central lacks engagement and following.

Social Function Problems:
1. A WP Central user has to be contacted via email to know his thread or reply has a comment or reply itself. In the email it suggest to go directly to the comment via app but that rarely happens successfully.
2. Users have to scroll through 10s to 100s of comments to search for their specific thread on the web via the article.
3. Inconsistent and annoying CAPTCHA for replies and posting comments

Being a user to other websites and comment systems. I find that the WP Central has the least engaging comment and social system of them all. I love to keep up with my threads and discussions especially when the relevancy is high among other users.

As a consistent user and taking liking to this site. I and im sure MANY others would love to see some improvements on the social community.

Possible Implements or Considerations

1. Disqus Comment System
Example: Disqus – The Web’s Community of Communities

This is one of the most widely used comment systems on the web, it performs excellent on mobile device, the web and in apps such as IGN.

2. Facebook Comments:
Example: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/comments/

With Facebook being the largest social network in the world most people login and use their facebook for a complete social engaging experience from Comments, Likes, Shares and other features. This provides instant notifications for users either on the article, facebook or email.

Im sure there is many other systems that take full advantage of a websites users and social features and integrates them perfectly for people whom love to keep up with their discussions.

Users if you have any ideas or feedback to help this come forward or to action please comment, suggest or contact WP Central as well.

Thank you

 

[sd173]

I think it's a great idea to have app notifications about replies to comments (in addition to the email option). I'm not sure where you're getting 2 & 3 from though. I've never had to use a captcha on WPCentral ever.

I'm not exactly part of WPCentral in any way at all, so I don't know how accurate this is, but I think it would be way too much effort to convert to Disqus, especially when I read a comment a while back from (I think) Daniel Rubino that said there will be a comment ranking system soon (as in + & - on comments), which would make it pretty similar to Disqus.

 

[jibgilmon]

Disqus would be GREAT! My least favorite thing about viewing comments on WPCentral is that I can't hide a comment. If I want to only read the top comments, it's extremely annoying to keep scrolling down through all of the replies. ESPECIALLY ON MY PHONE!

 

[James Falconer]

1. A WP Central user has to be contacted via email to know his thread or reply has a comment or reply itself. In the email it suggest to go directly to the comment via app but that rarely happens successfully.

​On this point... what do you mean by it rarely happens successfully? What are the pain points here that we can fix?

 

[Laura Knotek]

​On this point... what do you mean by it rarely happens successfully? What are the pain points here that we can fix?

I'm not sure what's not working for this member, but I've noticed that the emails are hit or miss. Frequently they do not arrive.