News Discussion in Forums

[palandri]

In the last update from James he mentioned bringing the front page news discussion to the forums. They are setting it up at iMore first and will then bring it to the other forums:

News & Discussion forum is one that brings ALL of the stories posted to the blogs, right into the forum. This is important for a couple of reasons:

1. It brings the news directly to our diehard forums members (no need to go anywhere else)
2. It allows those that may be a bit ?shy? about commenting in the blogs a place to go and discuss the latest news right in the forums.

So normal forum rules will be followed correct?

 

[Laura Knotek]

Well, the comments will be in the forums, not on the blog page, so I'd think that would help prevent spam or comments that don't follow the rules.

 

[Dave Blake]

If its posted in the forum then the forum rules apply. So yes we will moderate these just like we do any other part of the forum.

 

[Dave Blake]

One more thing I would like to say about this. When I see MN doing something I think could be harmful to the forum I speak my mind. It is because of this that new features will roll out on other MN sites before here. At times I have to be convinced that this is for the greater good before I will give in on something.

At this point I am no longer being asked to give my opinion on anything. I think everybody knows they will get my input, they don't have to ask. For the record I think this one is a very good idea. I am sorry I didn't think of it first.

Discussions should take place on the forum. Things like "Talk Mobile" take the discussion out of the forum. This is harmful to the Nations INHO. All the great TM discussions that took place are lost in comments forever. These conversations should have been directed to the forums where the commentary could have been categorized and preserved.

 

[palandri]

One more thing I would like to say about this. When I see MN doing something I think could be harmful to the forum I speak my mind. It is because of this that new features will roll out on other MN sites before here. At times I have to be convinced that this is for the greater good before I will give in on something.

At this point I am no longer being asked to give my opinion on anything. I think everybody knows they will get my input, they don't have to ask. For the record I think this one is a very good idea. I am sorry I didn't think of it first.

Discussions should take place on the forum. Things like "Talk Mobile" take the discussion out of the forum. This is harmful to the Nations INHO. All the great TM discussions that took place are lost in comments forever. These conversations should have been directed to the forums where the commentary could have been categorized and preserved.

A couple of things. I think it's a good idea as long as it follows the forum rules. It's bound to be a very active area for us. I hope this new hook doesn't open up any security holes. I have no desire to change my credit card number again, like after the last fiasco. This vBulletin forum software is still real buggy, I hope everything works out with this new addition.

 

[Dave Blake]

I won't know for sure until they turn it on here but I think all they are doing is making it so each new blog post generates a former thread. If done correctly it should be harmless. It would be like any other thread started on the forum.

 

[stmav]

Not sure I agree on the good idea part, but do agree it could be active. How many of the blog comments are actually discussion of the post, and how many are a cross between thread cropping and the nonsense in the 20k post thread? I can see a good bit of moderating and then a good bit of complaining when it's not open season like the blog comments. I know they are trying to increase traffic on some sites. But I'm not sure these ideas translate well to sites that are already active. I don't mind modding, but so far both ideas run out look like they increase the workload. So then what happens if what we already do starts slipping? Get more mods? If so, who?

Sorry if I'm coming off as too negative or not a part of the big picture. Just my opinion. I'll still follow the rules and do what needs to be done.

 

[Dave Blake]

Never step back from your opinion trust me I don't / won't unless its for the greater good. Here is the good part I see. A person asks a question that has been covered in the blog by one of the writers. We can then link that topic for the OP and he can then review the blog post. It gives. That person a place to ask more in depth questions about the blog post without having to deal with the troll comments we get in comments now. Hopefully the writers will share their expertise in the forum threads.

Yes it is more work for us but what I see the good out ways the bad. I don't think this increases the number of posts per day much it just moves the conversation to a more easily contained area. Once the trolls get the idea that their BS won't be tolerated in the forum they will retreat to the comments to post. We might even get a few of them banned before they realize what's happening.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Never step back from your opinion trust me I don't / won't unless its for the greater good. Here is the good part I see. A person asks a question that has been covered in the blog by one of the writers. We can then link that topic for the OP and he can then review the blog post. It gives. That person a place to ask more in depth questions about the blog post without having to deal with the troll comments we get in comments now. Hopefully the writers will share their expertise in the forum threads.

Yes it is more work for us but what I see the good out ways the bad. I don't think this increases the number of posts per day much it just moves the conversation to a more easily contained area. Once the trolls get the idea that their BS won't be tolerated in the forum they will retreat to the comments to post. We might even get a few of them banned before they realize what's happening.

Dave I like this idea. I think it will help get rid of the trolls who currently like to invade the blog comments even if they're banned from the forums. I think we'll have fewer trolls if the comments get made in the forums, not on the blog page, so I think this is a great idea.

It'll also solve the issue with the profanity on the blog comments, since we don't allow it on the forums.

 

[stmav]

Look at the profiles of the main culprits or even the majority of those that post in comments. They rarely if ever post in the forums. So I don't see a big numbers of bans coming that way. They already know it doesn't fly here. It will be interesting to see how many people don't leave the forums to check out the news. Because I think that's where most of your action will come from in the news forum. I don't see a lot of those posting in the comments switching due to the lack of moderation there. Maybe at first out of curiosity or something new, but after some deletions and infractions, gone. Why leave the wild west for civilization. I might be wrong, but I could see it easily being a ghost town or not as active as the comments.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Look at the profiles of the main culprits or even the majority of those that post in comments. They rarely if ever post in the forums. So I don't see a big numbers of bans coming that way. They already know it doesn't fly here. It will be interesting to see how many people don't leave the forums to check out the news. Because I think that's where most of your action will come from in the news forum. I don't see a lot of those posting in the comments switching due to the lack of moderation there. Why leave the wild west for civilization?

I've seen a lot of trolls who were banned from the forums that were still posting in the blog comments. Maybe that isn't the case now, but it was a couple months ago.

 

[stmav]

I've seen a lot of trolls who were banned from the forums that were still posting in the blog comments. Maybe that isn't the case now, but it was a couple months ago.

Yes, because that's the only place they can post. But I haven't seen that many. The ones I've seen the most active lately, don't post here and haven't been banned.

 

[palandri]

OK, I thought all the comments were going to be in the forums now, but if I am understanding this correctly, there will be forum comments and we will still have the front page comments? Correct?

 

[Laura Knotek]

OK, I thought all the comments were going to be in the forums now, but if I am understanding this correctly, there will be forum comments and we will still have the front page comments? Correct?

I thought certain articles would be sent to the forums, and the comments on those would be forums only, locked on blog page. But other articles would still be on blog page without sending to forums, so comments would still be on blog page, not forums.

I could be wrong, but that's what I thought.

 

[stmav]

Just went and checked imore news forum. Not many answers in the forum at all. Still going to the comments. And the threads from the news forum are showing up in the unanswered threads list. Didn't even think about that. Yeah, good times.

 

[palandri]

I thought certain articles would be sent to the forums, and the comments on those would be forums only, locked on blog page. But other articles would still be on blog page without sending to forums, so comments would still be on blog page, not forums.

I could be wrong, but that's what I thought.

LOL! Dave, what is it?

 

[Laura Knotek]

I think it has to be one or the other, not both.

If they're linking the comments to the forums, then comments on the blog page need to be disabled.

 

[stmav]

I think it has to be one or the other, not both.

If they're linking the comments to the forums, then comments on the blog page need to be disabled.

If they're going to do it, that would be the optimum way. But Daniel has always liked the flow of the blogs. Don't know if I see him going for that. Some growing pains and things to figure out that's for sure.

 

[Dave Blake]

It looks to me like its BOTH... Comments and forum thread. Here is the deal. This is what I am seeing here I have no facts because I have not been introduced to this yet. I told you all they never tell me anything. This is what I think. The writer posts an article and a thread with a little bit of the information is posted in a automatically generated thread. Yes they will be in unanswered threads until someone comments. This a new thread.

Some benefits might be that people don't have to leave the forums to see what articles are posted. People wanting to avoid the trolls will sigh up to the forum to comment on articles.

Down side, all comments on the blog will slowly become only trolls if something is not done to stop it.

Again I have zero facts here. Nobody has taken the time to explain this to me.

EDIT: I just emailed James a link to this thread

 

[James Falconer]

Hey all,

Let me clear things up here. How this works is really simple.

Anytime a new article is posted in the blogs, that article is posted in the forums. It gets posted as a new thread in a specific forum, with the feature image, a snippet of the article and a link back to the article in the blogs. Nothing changes on our end, standard moderation rules and policies still apply.

Like I said in the email I sent out to bring everyone up to speed, this does two things:

1. brings news directly into our forums for our diehard's to discuss.
2. allows any 'shy' users a place to comment on stories without having to go to the blogs.

Comments left on the actual blog post will NOT show up. Only POSTS left in the actual forum thread.

The added benefit of this, and thinking WAYYYY ahead here... is once we make improvements to our commenting system, what we can do to help our forums out is something like this... Anytime a new post is made in the blogs, we'll have the usual 'X Comments' tally, but we may also have 'X Forum Comments'. See where this could go? We could use each and every story in the blogs as a way of driving more interest and members into the forums.

So far on iMore this has been a success. The iMore team has been amazing and quite honestly the new forum doesn't get THAT much action, but it isn't an additional stress or problem for anyone. I'd say the feedback has been 90% positive, and 10% negative.

I'll be in touch directly with Dave when the time comes to port this over to WPC, because I want to ensure we're already just in case things get crazy. I doubt they will, because you're a stellar team here... but always best to be prepared!

Hope this helps!