What's a nested comment?


As far ar rating abuse goes, I have no problem with it.

When I see all my "1's", I know I've struck a chord.



Its the "3's" that get to me

From your post, I'm a little uncertain about how to deal with commenters like Al and Robert Brown.  Are they to be ignored?  Answered?  Rated down?

I have no problem with differences of opinion, but I don't think that the two I mentioned contribute much to the discussion.  Their nit-picking attempts to trip up other commenters don't seem to add much to the quality of the discourse.

So, are they included in your don'ts for 0's and 1's and even 2's?  Maybe I don't really understand what a troll is.

A few things:

First, I think these posts giving some insight into the direction of the site are just great. I've been involved in far too may web projects where features just sort of appear one day, and everyone is left stumbling around half blind until they figure out what it is, and whether or not they like it. So please, keep these coming,

Second, with regard to moderating comments, you may want to take a look at the way slashdot handles it, if you haven't already. They have a level of moderation called "meta-moderation" where users are able to view posts and decide whether or not they were moderated appropriately (i.e. fair or unfair). I believe in the particular case of slashdot that  too may moderations marked as unfair will result in a reduced ability for that user to moderate posts. In the case of TPMCafe, where every user can moderate, you may simply want to remove moderation points that enough other users deem to be unfair. This would also be a good place to put any guidlines you might have for what sort of moderation is fair and what is foul.

Lastly, my only word of caution is beware of adding too much. The old adage may be that too may cooks spoil the soup, but I think it's just as accurate to say that too many ingredients will as well. Be wary of adding too many bells and whistles, as in the long run they'll only serve to distract the users from what this site is meant to focus on (not to mention the fact that the more features there are, the more maintennace this site will require).

TPMCafe has rapidly become one of my favorite websites, and I'm sure with such a fine team behind it it will only improve with time. Kudos all around. 

If I'm not mistaken, nested comments means you can respond directly to a comment and it will appear under the comment. 

Not quite - because that in fact is something you can do here already. 

However the difference that nesting the comments would make would be that you could clearly see this was the case.  Typically the follow up comments would be indented, so it's easy to see which comment they are responding to, in any case it would in some way be visually indicated.  (Not something you can do here at the moment)

(Actually I think threaded comments is the more common name for this and "nested" is really a hangover from programming languages.  E.g. many versions of C will not allow one comment to be nested inside another)

My only problem, if it can be called that, with TPM cafe is that it has too much good content.  I am spending entirely too much time at work visiting this site.

Seriously though, I think one thing TPM did which this site has greatly expanded on is to allow the Democratic centrists, liberals and righties have a place where they all can talk.  I love Kos and Atrios is awesome, but here I get counterpoints from guys like Ed Kilgore which really make me evaluate my postion again. That is all to the good.

I do like the idea of nested comments.

Would love for you to add permalinks, so that I can easily quote and link back to TPMCafe posts from my About.com site. My readers would enjoy the excellence of TPMCafe.

Also, I am a low-tech person, and focused mainly on ideas and writing.  Have often given up figuring out how to leave ratings for others at TPMCafe. Are there clear instructions for us slow ones?

The lowest ratings should be reserved solely for posts that are obviously abusive: ie. not annoying but harmless posters who routinely barf up of GOP talking points (as though we might forget what these are), but rather those who close with "leftist scum" & that sort of thing. It would also be nice if they could be revised after a mistake or upon further reflection.

I like the contents of this website, but it's difficult to read.
The center column  is too narrow, which requires a lot of scrolling.
The whole business of rating comments and nesting comments is too complicated. I wish you would scrap all that and make the site as user-friendly as possible.
The Huffington Post's new format would be a good one to follow.

I agree there are a lot of "gotcha" posts.  Those should be rated lower.  But then again I have seen some good opposition posts rated low when they shouldn't have been.  I have seen a lot of your posts and ratings Jane and, as far as I am concerned, your mindset is perfect for this site...well thought out, informed and courteous.

This isn't directed at you Jane, it is just a general observation.  I see too many take comments personally when they shouldn't.  We are discussing one of the most devisive topics...politics.  People who want to be involved in a political discourse need to have a thick skin and if they don't they should reconsider jumping into the water.

I strongly agree with the poster who asks for chronological order.  I was going to ask for an option that allows either selecting All or New Comments only.  When a discussion is especially lively [Begala's iconography posting] and I want to look at it more than once, scrolling thru looking for the new/latest comments is mucho tedious.  By using chronological order, at least I could use my find command to get to the first new posting and continue from there.

Order and user-friendly, those are my prime issues.  I care not a bit about ratings.

Thanks for giving us this wonderful place to take our coffee breaks!

Perhaps the rating system should be expanded, or given another dimension. Although the posters who routinely spew republican talking points may not be abusive in the sme sense as those who go for spam or obscenity, they're be no means harmless. And their very veneer of reasonableness makes it harder to carry on a useful conversation, because the discussion suddenly becomes about what they think it should be rather than about what the rest of the posters or commenters might have wanted to talk about. If I want to hear that racism and sexism no longer exist in America, or that the free market is a cure for all ills, there's always usenet.

All-

As I have said before in other comments, the level of discourse here is remarkably refreshing, with a level of civility (in most cases) that encourages expression of various points of view without "fear of flameing".

The ratings system is a place that I have not yet gone, as I am troubled by the notion that early on a strong agreement by only one or two can move a comment to the head of the class.  As the discussion builds, newer posts are set at a numbers disadvantage with the ominous "3" default making the bar harder to reach.  I would advocate for a chronological order that would contain a rating, but not prejudice a post in the order of the read.

There may be an option on the back-end of Scoop to allow a registered user to order the comments based on rating.  That would be an acceptable user side option.

I would also like to know something more about the moderators.  Are they the same people as the contributors to the various discussion areas?  

I still can't find a way to read the comments in chronological order and that is a major turn-off. I have tried fiddling with the preferences but without success. Does anyone have any idea how it's done?

Go to your personal menu, "MyTPMCafe."

Select "My Preferences".

Select "Comments".

On that page in the drop-drown box labeled "Sorting based on comment ratings:" select "Ignore ratings" and in the drop down box labeled "Sorting based on comment age:" select whether you want newest or oldest first.

Hit "Save Preferences" at the bottom.

I think that a simple chronological listing should be the default option. Otherwise it's rather confusing especially for newbies.

I agree!

Not only because of newbies, but because unregistered lurkers see the comments in rated order, and it makes the site look like we participating are nuts, can't follow a logical discussion, and don't pay attention to what other people say!

It's a really wack thing about Scoop design. It sort of implies to me that the designers thought so highly and simplistically about their ratings system that they presumed these things: all quality would "rise to the top" and people would always use "reply" and not "post a comment" when talking about something earlier in the thread. (BTW, people will use "Reply" more often if they have a nested or threaded presentation, because they can "see" the "why" of doing it.)

I would also like to know something more about the moderators.  Are they the same people as the contributors to the various discussion areas?  

I can moderate. I don't know why. I think it's a secret club. :-)

Actually, there is a difference between "threaded" and "nested".  Threaded comments work as you describe - the first comment is displayed and then all replies are hidden and require the user to select a link for them to be displayed.  Nested comments show the text of all comments but indent replies relative to their parent comment so thatwho is replying to whom is visually apparent.  Flat comments (the current system) show the text of all comments without visually indicating which ones are replies using indentation.

At least, that is how the terms are conventionally applied.  Some sites may use the terms differently. 

Robert Brown in particular just comes out of nowhere sometimes to smack people down or insult people.

I remember (quite fondly of course) the time he decided to declare my mom was a die hard partisan hack who must be a union sell out because she was a public school teacher.

The population expanding 10x or more is going to change how those comments effects the site. It's the difference between getting bumped in a small calm, group, and gettign bumped in a large, highly charged group like a bar.

One comment from a known troll in a small community can be ignored. The same comment in a large community is far more likly to prompt a counter trolls, and just put people on edge. Any responses then have twice the draw and put people twice as much on edge. etc..

With trolls taking only a few seconds to post, that's the simple principle why most political fora are so heavilly trolled. Not harshly discouraging that will produce the same here with certainty.

it showed tremendous ignorance on his part

I doubt it. That's a classic troll. Say something totally inflamitory, and then sit back and laugh at the ensuing chaos and lack of meaningful conversation. He and some others already here will keep trolling.

Btw, nesting will help a bit, but not much going by the current ratings guidelines. There is still too much rating ambiguity, way too much, and it does way too littel to discourage flame wars.The sort of comments Robert Brown made will actually be uprated more as the population increases, both by other trolls and by who feel the need to vote for "their side" in a flame war.

So they're not going to drop in threads, nested ot otherwise, very well. Also there was no mention of user raing thresholds, but without stronger ratings guildlines I'm not sure if that will matter.

Anyways, it should be interesting.

I'm in hearty agreement with those who are skeptical of the way comments are used here. As someone who is a bit of a contrarian, I find that often my comments are rated low by people who disagree and high by people who agree. I just can't understand that.




My big suggestion has to do with links and quotes. It's too hard to embed links in the text of a comment or quote things extensively with a blockquote. I turned off the WYSIWYG editor because it was driving me crazy and have had to type in HTML code - which I barely know - to do a lot of formatting. I still don't have the linking code memorized.




One of the sites that solves this problem well in my opinion is Little Green Footballs (which is mostly populated by hard core wingnuts, but that's another issue). When you want to bold, italicize, quote something or insert a link, you're able to click on something which makes a little applet pop up. All you have to do is type into the applet and the site automatically inserts the HTML code. That seems to work pretty well.




Final comment has to do with type size. I think if the type size on screen were smaller, you could see more on your screeen. As it stands now, the large type, combined with the narrow area, means too much scrolling.

TPMCafe is a great forum for discussion.

I really enjoy the quality of thinking visible at TPMCafe, however, it would be nice to put the audience and participants here into action as well.  

One thing that is exciting at DailyKos is their frequent calls to action--like asking readers: to vote on on-line polls, to make phone calls to encourage or prevent some kind of action, and to make donations.  

Because it so often feels like we mere individuals can't make a difference, it would be really empowering if we could use this site more to act as a group to make a difference collectively.  If we could use this site not only to discuss the best course for our nation, but also to help that vision come to fruition, it would be a very, very good thing.

I'm not sure how best to do this.  Perhaps every day or week, the editors at TPMCafe could choose a "Featured Call to Action"--small things (like letter or e-mail writing campaigns) that could make a difference if acted upon by even a fraction of the people who check this site.  Or perhaps there could be a discussion area or blog area specifically for people asking for group involvement on some matter.

Secondly, ratings of 0s or 1s should never be given out to people who are participating in good faith in a discussion.

With copious due respect to Josh, I'm a little disappointed his new rules sound a lot like the rules you'd find on a MSM talk show, and other forum, with IMO predictable results. Good faith is too vague, too broad to effect useful moderation.

Take this comment "Democrats are spineless that's why I hate them" (give or take a few sentences and embellishment) or the same about Republicans for that matter. Would that qualify as good faith? If so, then we're basically saying there are no meaningful standards once rating discrepancies and human nature for polemic and piling on is taken into account.

My Rumsfeld impression:

Is that comment an opinion? Sure.

Does it make an attempt to add something meaningful to the discussion? No.

Does it need to be said, having any novelty value? No.

Is there any likely response to the comment other than a pile-on "is so" "is not" response? No.

If the numbers of such posts increase, do they become even more likly as a result of lowering the bar, and do attempts at thoughtful rebuttals become even less likly? Yes. 

That's a troll. It will lead to nothing but crap. If TPMC allows that, then look out. I'm willing to take gentleman’s bets if anyone is interested. ;)

That's a 5 in my opinion.  But then, I'm probably abusing the rating system.  I rated your comment high because I've found myself pondering the pros and cons of rating sloganism and propaganda negatively.  It's easy to tromp on GOP pastische due to my political bias, but to be fair, political discourse from all sides is full of semantic distortions.  But I'm drifting from original point - I gave you a high mark because of something in me, as if I was confirming my own thoughts as well as your comment.

But I wonder if this is a form of rating abuse.  If you track it down, it gets into some rather messy ideas about the impossibility of pure objectivity.   

lol.

Actually, there is some "truth" in your acknowledgement of there being no truth. :-)

That of which you speak is actually a very fine subtletly that one gets after a while of using these ratings. You are, in actuality, not rating people highly because they agree with you, but because they are helping you think. It's a very very interesting thing. It's also dangerous if there are not enough skeptics around to watch for growing group-think. It's especially dangerous when people start circling the wagons when someone challenges them.

Still, in the end, I have found that the majority of a community with a bit of experience knows a troll when they see one.

But the most successful way to defeat trolls is not ratings. It's to stop feeding them. They live to bait people into replying. Ratings are a simply an out when you are tempted to reply, so the "fight" can begin. (I wonder if all trolls are professional wrestling fans.) Ratings don't hurt them. Someone I consider to act as a troll here quite often posted elsewhere on this thread about his 1 ratings, for example.

One thing I do disagree with Josh Marshall about: the zero rating. The zero rating is the only effective use of ratings against trolling, because by removing the comment from the discourse to "hidden comments," it removes the temptation of replying. It helps to stop trolls dead in their tracks.

Nick, There are a couple points here.  But let me focus in on one.  I prefer well-thought-out comments more than zingers or dashed off responses.   I'd like to see more of the first and less of the second.  And the ratings should help to get us there. Like you I really like the high signal level at TPMCafe.

Let me also say that I'm quite open to making changes in the way we run the site.

But there's an issue I think you're ignoring.  There are five classifications for ratings, six for trusted users.  Trusted users can give 0s, which the pull-down menu identifies as "spam."  

Now, I have no problem with giving low ratings to silly or insubstantial comments.  The question is, how low?  We've set aside the zero rating for "spam" and the 1 rating for "inappropriate".  Spam would be among other things a comment that gives the url to a porn site, or an ad for baseball caps, or whatever.  I think we all know what spam is.  And that's what the zero is there for.  One zero from a trusted user and a comment disappears (something we may consider changing, long story).  Then it can only be brought back to life by another trusted user who goes in to the hidden comments section.

Then there's a 1 rating for inappropriate.  What's inappropriate?  I'd say, gratuitous profranity is inappropriate.  Vicious attacks on other readers.  Ethnic slurs or insults, etc.  That's not an exhaustive list.  But those are examples.  

A few thrown off lines of conventional wisdom are not inappropriate.  That might get a 3 rating, or perhaps a 2 ("Not Helpful").  But not a 0.  It's simply not what that rating is meant for.  

have had to type in HTML code

NO! YOU DON'T have to do that! You shut it off but you didn't follow through by selecting another good option available here.

Easy Instructions here for using the very nice Scoop-furnished editor that is available after you shut off the icky WYSIWYG editor.

  Thanks for the tip but that's precisely what I have been trying. For some reason it just doesn't work. If it does work for other people the problem is probably at my end; perhaps my browser. Anyone else have the same problems? Anyway that's another reason why it would be a good idea to have chronological listing as the default.

 BTW I have noticed that there is a fair bit of empty space at the end of my posts which isn't the case for other people's posts. Anyone know what I can do to stop this?
 

Josh: Now, I have no problem with giving low ratings to silly or insubstantial comments.  The question is, how low?

 Ok, good. “how low?” is the question.

Do you want TPMC to protect even extreme speech, or to set standards for civility and  for "high signal" debates?

I think that 0-1 bracket as you described it is a false distinction, which compresses your other ratings causing ambiguity with the initial post 3.  Basically, you don’t want either SPAM, or vicious and vulgar tirades on the site at all… Right? Why? They’ll only lower the bar and provoke geometric increase of in-kind response.

Both should be 0. I recommend Slashdot style descriptive ratings for “0-SPAM” to “0-gratuitous profanity” etc to help accidental offenders and mods.

Josh: A few thrown off lines of conventional wisdom are not inappropriate.  That might get a 3 rating, or perhaps a 2 ("Not Helpful").

First of all, 1 and 2 should lose their stigma. They’re still passing grades so to speak.

A few thrown off lines of conventional wisdom which is benign should be a 2. Possibly inflammatory soundoffs should be a 1.

Include more descriptors: venting, flame, troll, obvious, unconsidered, etc. It’s important to clearly mark them as the lower grade the site will allow. People can still sound off and vent, and there is nothing wrong with that, or any shame in a 2 for doing so, but people who want to skip soundoffs should be enabled by the site to do so. 1 helps identify potential trolls.

3 is the starting place of all comments. To a 3 people feel the need to respond. If trolls and sound offs are in the 3 territory, that temps piling on, rating up/down on partisan knee-jerk politics, etc. That breaks thread sorting, encourages rating abuse, and increases trolling geometrically. So, no way should “sound off” comments generally rise above 2.

3 is not “OK” it’s GOOD. 3 should presume to add something to the discussion, not just take up more space. They should have a novel thought, add information, needed to be said, etc. A 3 desires consideration and raises the signal. The gist is that you're only going to encourage a "high signal" when you set the expectation for it.

From there, based on quality they go up to 4 and 5.

Btw, regarding picking mods and meta-rating, also called reputation rating, i.e. mojo.

I suggest you take a sort of fractal approach to propagating your design goals across the site. By that I mean you and your contributors are the initial pattern. You set guidelines, make sure they’re clearly understood, and choose who best reflect that pattern, they’re the “root” mods.

Use meta-rating to tracks ratings and compares them with the “pattern” established by root mods. That algorithm chooses to branch out the mod community appropriately.

Choose “roots” who are diverse as you’d like the site to be, and who will reward “objective” standards as much as possible, then let it propagate. It’s very dynamic with the pattern changing as people change. Importantly, you can always garden at the root level, and even accelerate or slow propagation adjusting your meta-ranking algorithm to be stronger or weaker.

Anyways… this is a bit different, and will hopefully produce very different results form the rest of political forum. So, that’s my thoughts on it. Maybe I’ll break into 3 territory for this…;)

PS: a few more points:

* Create a separate areas devoted to ratings complaints. Or perhaps allow rating complaint posts to be flagged by the petitioner as mod readable only. Rate complaints put directly to discussions as 0-1 to keep threads on topic and prevent wars.

* make rating anonymous to prevent rating patronage and rating wars.

* If rating abuse becomes a problem, announcements can be made, and steps taken through meta-rating and “root” gardening.

Looks like I'm outvoted, but I agree in preferring a larger column width and perhaps smaller type as well. I never liked the few words per line in Josh's site, but it's more of an issue here, because of the sheer volume of new words through which to scroll down.

I agree, and I mean strongly as possible, with those wanting chronological order (and unable to get it with the preferences that one poster suggested). If the number of comments has grown, I want to be able to find the new ones without such careful proofing of the entire site.

As for ratings, I guess I still don't get them. It's nice to allow such expressed opinions, but I'm not seeing how it affects the displayed comments in practical terms. Maybe if you convinced me that a moderator took action based on them, nixing some egregious ones or moving some zingers to "recommended." But that's so marginal a difference it can't explain the prominence of the feature. What am I missing?

Hmm. I wonder where my paragraph breaks went...

i suppose no ratings and no nesting isn't real popular huh? the thing that bugs me most is when the chronology is off. i like reading comments in order and follow the discussion more naturally. the ratings break this up. people should learn to tune out and skip comments they don't like. it's not really that difficult and then you don't have to think about 0's and 4's and 2's and judging people and all that. this site is still young and over time the regular commenters will police themselves.

ratings are lame... (feel free to give me a 2!)

You were making suggestions about changing the roster, presenting the opinion that you don't like it the way it is.

I was simply giving my opinion that I like the way the are doing it now. Whoever is putting it together seems to have a good bead on what I am looking for as an alternative to what I can't find elsewhere.

Just expressing my opinion. And your preference as a reader is of course worth putting out there just as much as mine, and should be paid just as much attention, of coures. Up to the management to judge.

And not that it matters, but that's coming from a longtime feminist female who hates the sophmoric male animal house nature of much of the blogosphere and who has a black sister-in-law and two 1/2 black neices.

Once again, I like hearing from experts. If most of those willing to contribute are from a New York and D.C. circle of acquaintances, that's no problem for me.

travy, you can view comments in chronological order by changing your settings; instructions to do that here earlier on this thread.

But from then on you must be logged in while you read them, so the settings take effect.

(Comments in the order of rating is the default setting, unfortunately. So when you're not logged in, you'll see them that way even if you change your settings.)

As for your other point, it's strange, because I believe most of us who have requested nested comments agree with you. We want them precisely because we would like to skip over some of the long off-topic sub-discussions that occur. In nested view, comments appear like an outline, with replies to comments under them; it makes it easier to do what you describe you like to do.

BTW, I used to have the same attitude you did about ratings, but then I got hooked. :-) You are probably better off staying where you are on that, mho.

Ya, is sort of like grade school at times, isn't it? I don't have my ego in whether I have a high mojo number, and it strikes me as ridiculous when people do, so much so that when I see that in someone else, I am driven to question the person about abusing the ratings system.

The thing I mostly use it for is to sort. I look for highly rated comments. And if I read something that I enjoyed, as pay back for others that rated a comment for me, instead of a comment that wastes time and space like "I like that, that was good, thank you," a "good" or "excellent" rating tells the poster that quicker and easier plus it's like an advertisement for their comment, helps others find good comments to read. I think the reason it interests me is because of this similarity to advertising, as I have always been fascinated by marketing questions.

I imagine some would like the thank you note approach much better. But that conflicts with efficiency.

This is a great discussion, particularly since I note that the people who take the subject seriously enough to participate in the discussion are people whose "handles" I always look forward to seeing in a thread, since I know that - agree or disagree - I'm about to read something by someone who is "paying attention' and giving it some thought.  So thanks to all of you and since I don't want to divide our world here between the "cool" and the "uncool" you'll just have to guess which one of you are on which list.  :-)

I've recommended this place to friends as "graduate school" for blogging, on the basis that it's the place where people who have a Serious Clue what they're talking about and take the place seriously come and participate.  I used to looooove the internet, up to about 3 years ago, because there seemed to be an "IQ-cutoff" below which those people weren't around - it seemed to be the embodiment of the kind of future envisioned in Arthur C. Clarke novels of the 50s, where rationalism and intelligence governed.  But as I have been known to say at other boards, "the problem with the internet now is that computers are so user friendly that bipeds who lack frontal lobes and opposable thumbs can participate."  The nice thing about this place is that most everyone other than the rightie trolls appears to be fully equipped, frontal-lobe and thumb-wise.  Whatever new things go on here, I hope they promote this place staying as it is as regards the intelligence and knowledge level of the participants.

As to ratings.  As a "trusted user" - who learned "ratings abuse" the hard way at Kos - I do take the process seriously (despite some complaints from people who don't get what standards I am using - more on that in a minute).  People like the rightie WBC, who posts merely to provoke "bad reactions", will get a "doughnut hole" wherever I see them, but only after I have established their modus operandi.  Basically, a post that makes me want to write "you @#$%$#@!! why don't you @#$%^%$#@!!!" when a re-reading of that post after I go through the whole thread gets the same response are prime candidates.

A few times I have gotten e-mail from people who got 5s, 1s and 0s from me - all on the same thread.  To which I have said, "go look at what you wrote."  People who put 10 posts on the same thread are going to get "the fish eye" from me.  On the recent Hiroshima thread, a poster asked me why I gave him a 5 one one post and rated the rest 1s and 2s, to which I replied "Your posts were based on information that has been proven wrong - if you're going to write about history you have to keep up with the research."  Posts based on bad info - when one is dealing with historical facts - are at the least "not helpful."

As to opinionated posts, if I bad-rated them just for disagreement, then this opinionated poster would be putting myself in danger.  Opinionted posts that are assertions without the backup of fact are suspect, but those who show they are thinking are going to be defended - to the point where I have given 5s to people other people were disagreeing with and down-rating, even where I disagreed with the poster but saw he/she was "sincere."

I guess it all comes down to what Potter Stewart said about pornography:  "I know it when I see it."

I really don't think there's anything in particular Josh can do - other than rationalize the site design - to change this place.  The fact it attracts quality posters is why I love it.  Long may it reign!!

OK, let me try to give a sense of where I've been rating things as I've gone along (although I should probably rate a lot more comments than I do).  Like everyone else, it's a system in progress and it needs more work:

0:  As Josh said, Zero is for Spam.  I'd probably also put something over the top racist or violent in this category.

1:  Inappropriate.  Something that's simply beyond the bounds of decent conversation.  This doesn't mean never using a profane word.  But it does mean that if all the post has are profanities.  I also like Nick's idea of going with zero-spam and zero-profane.

2:  Not so helpful.  This is probably how I've treated ratings wars.  The lowest I'll give someone whose comment I think is awful is a 2.  I reserve this number for people who come on here to maliciously provoke.  Well thought out responses that I disagree with remain unrated or sometimes even get high ratings.  But people who say (in my opinion) stupid things get a two.  I feel no sympathy because it doesn't remove them from the conversation, simply drops them down.

3:  Rarely if ever used because everyone already starts at three. I can see using a three to raise up a comment that's been rated 1 or 0 that I've disagreed with.

4:  Most of the comments.  Well thought out responses and good contributions to the discussion.  I never want to see the mentality of other scoop sites where nothing but the top rating is given.  I think people should give lots of 4's and reserve the 5's for only the very best.

5:  Go write your own blog.  These are the top comments that normally take several paragraphs, are well thought out, have links to supporting information and could legitimately be their own post.  I've also used these as a "tip jar" mentality for someone who has written a good user blog or someone who has a string of good 4-level comments in the comments section.

Thoughts? 

Artappraiser, you wrote The thing I mostly use it for is to sort. I look for highly rated comments. A while back, you posted a URL for using the search feature to show most recent comments.

 http://www.tpmcafe.com/?op=search&offset=0&old_count=30&a
mp;type=comment&section=&string=Search+TPMCafe&search
=Search&count=30&orderby=date.

I've found it a good way to navigate.  Do you mean here that you can sort by ratings too? If so, a URL again would be much appreciated.

hey often deserve 4's or 5's, not because I agree with their point of view, but based on them adding to the discourse, and other times they rightly deserve low ratings.

What you are describing is the early days of trolling - say 1975 to 1980.   Since then, and particularly with the expansion of netnews into Usenet in the 1980-1990 time frame, trolling has been perfected into an art, which anyone with the time to invest and some skill at rhetoric can master (it helps to have read the classics of 1920s communist thought also, interestingly enough).  A well-crafted modern troll is specifically designed to appear to be a controversial addition to the dicussion but to actually have the effect of sending that discussion off at a 35 degree angle chosen by the troller, and to damage the discourse of the community so trolled.  2 or 3 of those 35 degree diversions and the sincere discussion participants find themselves in Rove-land, accepting the Radicals' premises without knowing how they got there.

Additionally, you assume that the participants here are all straightforward actors, and that there are no professional trolls.  I would hold out Al as a counter-example:  that userid and whoever or whatever is behind it appears on more than 30 left-of-John-McCain discussion boards, posting the same sort of dialectic, written in a consistent style, at every one.  And diverting every discussion into Rove-style premise framing using modern troll techniques.  I have no idea who this guy is (though I have my suspicions), but I have a hard time thinking he is just "contributing" to the conversation.

sPh 

I recently posted a comment that was one of the first on the topic.  Coming back a day later, my comment was gone, zeroed out.  A few of the existing comments were, in fact, replies to mine and they just hung there.  Then some moderator re-rated my comment & it showed up again very deep in the thread.  It drew more replies.  Then some moderator zeroed it out again.  Then it came back, I know not how, deeper & more lost in the thread--though the responses remained intact, in their various places.

It appears as if a moderator, or two, can function as censors of ideas they don't like.

My entry had no profanity, no link(s), no references.  It was a simple, factual series of defensible statements.  It also occurred to me that a moderator zeroed my comment and then posted a counter argument.

I've thought on this for 2 days.  I suppose it could be viewed by me as humorous--a combo of ignorance & arrogance & silliness by the moderator(s).  To have a comment resurrected twice from the sheol of ideas really is hilarious.  But I decided there is more to it than the comedy.  If I'm in a large hall speaking to a group and there are a few covert folks in the audience who can press a button, eliminate me from the stage, and then one of more of the anonymous arbiters substitute his or her ideas for mine . . . then I don't need to be there.

RE: userids are no longer hotlinks,

Only on comments, not on posts; it's been that way since I've been here, no change, some kind of fluke? It's inconvenient, I agree, but you can still get all the user ID info., it's open source:

Click on the search box without entering anything to get to the search page. Change the top drop-down to "Users". Put the user name in the "Containing" box. Hit search, click on the name, and you've got all the User ID links.

p.s. about replies to comments that have been zero'ed. I believe they get carried back and forth with the "parent" comment.

For those that don't understand that terminology: when you hit the "Reply" button to respond to someone else's comment, you are really replying to that comment, it goes under that comment chronologically, and if you could see it in a nested view, it would be indented under that comment.

If you instead chose to hit "post a comment" your comment will simply go next in line on the entire thread. It stands alone (unless someone replies to it, of course, then yours would carry that comment along with it.)

Even without the nested view being available here, there is a benefit to using "Reply" beyond that of it staying with the comment: the person you are responding to can see that someone has replied to their comment on when they look at "My Comments" on their personal menu! That way people can pick up on something someone said to them and respond days later.

Boz, I almost totally agree with your definitions, except I think you need to slide the low end down a notch.

Two very important points i think most people haven’t considered:

3 is where all new posts start. It's hard to ignore 3s unless one wants to miss all new posts. That means most readers will probably read 3+

As population expands exponentially, individual reader time will not; it remains flat. Therefore, reader time becomes increasingly scarce relative to number of posts. To preserve the appropriate scarcity of comments which are 3+ there will need to be more liberal use of 2. If the rating system doesn’t identify a significant amount of posts as simply being trite, predictable, familiar, and such as "not helpful" the rating system is going to break and fail to sort comments in a meaningful way to get good comments into  limited reading time. Hence the undifferentiated low signal that is most political fora.

This is like the old joke, not all comments can be above average. Some have to go down so some can rise. If most everything is left at 3, the ratings will be too ambiguous between new comment, trite, mediocre, and good. Then it becomes difficult to screen out the best from the vast number of posts which are impossible to be read due to time constraints.

SFCWallace writes: I'm starting to realize it's a place for liberals to talk to each other about how much they hate conservatives.

As far as I can tell from most of the comments, they are not about how much we "hate" conservatives. I don't know if I speak for all of us, but I would welcome well thought out comments that come down from the right side of the fence, as long as they are based in fact and are principled.

For example, conservatives are supposed to be for limited government. I personally feel that government has a purpose to improve the society at large. If you as a conservative are consistent, you should be condemning your congressmen and Senators for spending more and more and not having a balanced budget. The problem I see with too many conservatives is that they just toe a party line and not look within and say "you know, what Senator X did is not according to conservative principles."

In the case of, for example, the bankruptcy bill you believe in personal responsibility and therefore support it out of principle, I can respect that.  My Congressman is a Democrat whose largest campaign contribution comes from MBNA, so he voted for it; I am very disappointed in him about this and I will tell anyone that asks me.

If, on the other hand, you support steel tariffs just because President Bush did so to win a couple of votes in West Virginia, in other words you support President Bush just because he is a conservative but he doesn't do a conservative thing, I, and many others, don't respect that.

I know quite a few conservatives, some are blowhards [think cigarchomping ditto-heads], but some are principled people who have very principled reasons for thinking the way that they do. That does not make them evil or make me hate them.