dw_suggestions | Reply to multiple comments

Entry tags:

Reply to multiple comments

Title:
Reply to multiple comments

Area:
Comments

Summary:
A new ability for someone to write one comment and have it show as a reply to multiple other comments. This allows someone to reply to several people at once without having to actually comment multiple times.

Description:
In detail: I would picture something like checkboxes or the ability to click on more than one comment and reply to them all at the same time. This serves several purposes:

a) Sends comment notifications to everybody you reply to,

b) Brings conversation back to one thread (instead of branching off on everybody who you would reply to),

c) Can be efficiently represented in the UI in a nice way,

I'm sure there are other things we could think about as far as benefits to this, or ways to implement, etc.

Drawbacks are mostly: user confusion. Having a single reply to multiple parents is very counter to existing user behaviors and might just be entirely too confusing. This may also not be a feature useful enough to be worth implementing.

Posting to suggestions for some feedback! What do you think?

Poll #1961 Reply to multiple comments

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
13 (34.2%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
8 (21.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
10 (26.3%)

(I have no opinion)
4 (10.5%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (7.9%)

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I can only speak for myself, but I can't think of many times that I'd use this... except for, well, my latest post which is about a family illness. While I didn't get many responses on it here, I did get them on that *other* journal *g* and it would have been nice to have been able to respond to a few folks with a single comment. On the other hand, I certainly have no objection. Who knows, it might become quite useful. There are times when I post fic and I spend a lot of time posting "Thanks! Glad you liked it!" type responses. While I like to personalize those, I might just take advantage of the ability to do a mass reply.

Yeah, in my head the situation is:

I comment and say something. Four people reply with fairly similar things. I want to reply to them but I don't want to either cut and paste my reply to all, or reply to one and give the others URLs.

Maybe the use case is not strong enough to argue for it, very possible. Thank you!

Have to wait and see how many other folks weigh in... this close to Christmas this could get lost in the shuffle, though. :-) Might be like the introduction of the car. "PFFFT! It's just a rich man's toy! Nobody needs to go that fast! A horse can find its way home if necessary." In a year we may all wonder how we lived without it. :-)

I can see how some folks would find this useful, but any ADHD-brains just might be sporking your voodoo doll-self for it. It can be hard enough keeping up with one comment, let alone the same comment popping up in three different places -- and you've not even mentioned whether notifies would be sent out once, or multiple times. Assuming it'd be sent out once for every reply made (to the actual commenter being replied to), would it also be sent as a reply to each to the original poster? or just one reply with some kind of notation that it's to separate replies?

In the former case, any journal with high traffic and a tendency towards repetitive threads has sudden risk of getting even more email-alerts -- having to type out the reply each time is one way to encourage the laziness of replying once. In the latter case, how am I supposed to know which comment's being replied to? Will I see the body of all comments checked-off followed by the reply, or a list of links -- which means I open from email, go to browser, then go back to email, click on second, browser opens again, read, go back to email... etc. I can't remember who-said-what-when.

Last, there are plenty out there in journal-land who really should not be encouraged or facilitated in what, effectively, is assisted spamming. No matter how many emails I do or don't get, that part is not okay.

There would never be spam. I hate spam.

Try to imagine it as benign: it would simply show up under the comments it was on and let you reply to it as per a normal comment, but all of the discussion under it would be one thread, instead of the discussion continuing to diverge.

I'm getting the impression that I didn't explain this very well at all, so I'm sorry for that! I should draw some pictures.

Hrm. So it would show up multiple times, once for each comment it was a reply to?

*headscratch*

And yes, seconded on the notification complexities. Provided it's one notification to the original poster, rather than multiple, that might be okay...

It's also a bit odd for the replied-to people - they may or may not be aware that the reply is going to multiple parties...

There is quite a lot of potential for confusion ...

The reply would never go to multiple parties, though... picture it like this:

mark posts: Foo Foo!
+

dw_news replies: Hey, cool!
+

dw_biz replies: Awesome!

Now, I want to go back and reply to both the comments by biz and news. That would show up something like this:

mark posts: Foo Foo!
+

dw_news replies: Hey, cool!
++

mark replies: Thanks for your feedback!
+

dw_biz replies: Awesome!
++ (text: see comment by

mark, link here)

Note how the first one is my comment. The second one is a system message of some sort that isn't actually a comment, but it shows up in the place a comment would. When I do this, there are two emails sent:

a) Email to news, saying, "hey, Mark commented with "Thanks!""
b) Email to biz, saying, "hey, Mark commented with "Thanks!""

Same email content, almost, except they both link to my first comment. That way everybody can continue the discussion off of the one comment without having to go back and forth to see the comment that spiraled off from both points.

When somebody else replies to my comment, only one notification happens: the one to me. (I'm ignoring email notifications to the post author... we would NOT send duplicate notifications to them. In this case, we'd send them ONE notification linking to my original comment, and probably including the text of all of the replied to comments in the same email.)

At any rate, this discussion is exceedingly helpful. If I'm unable to explain what I'm thinking, then it's not a feature we should implement. :)

So some dickhead could use it for evil, wandering into, say,

dw_news and instead of saying "Thanks for contributing to this excellent discussion, my friends" (legit follow-up), he could say "FR33 P3N15 P1LLZ HTTP://EXAMPLE.COM/I-PWNED-THEIR-SERVERZ.HTM" and send out 15 e-mails with 1 comment.

Of course, that's only 1 comment to delete and mark as spam, but still 15 people have been bothered.

For this reason I suggest that community admins and journal owners should get to determine who has the power to create comments like this (and possibly flat-out prohibit it from anonymous commenters, though doubtless this would ruin some happy little reindeer games in places where the mice run wild and free like INGVA).

I think you might need to include the text of all the replied to comments in any notification - especially since the "reply" might include directed bits to individuals.

e.g.:

ID 1: mark posts: foo foo!
ID 2: + wilma replies: foo bar!
ID 4: + + thorfinn replies: fred foo baz, barney baz baz!
ID 3: + betty replies: bar bar.
ID 5: + + (see also reply by thorfinn: linky to 4)

... It's a bit weird, but I can see it happening. It's just confusing to look at, too, I think.

Deeper threads, and potential for crossed up multi-replies...

ID 1: mark posts: foo foo!
ID 2: + wilma replies: foo bar!
ID 4: + + thorfinn replies: fred foo baz, barney baz baz!
ID 6: + + fred replies: you're all very silly.
ID 3: + betty replies: bar bar.
ID 7: + + (see also reply by fred: linky to 6).
ID 5: + + (see also reply by thorfinn: linky to 4)
ID 8: + + + (see also reply by fred: linky to 6).

... I think that's starting to look very confusing, possibly. I'm not sure whether it would become unconfusing after a short while, but it's certainly initially confusing.

Another sticky UI point:
- Alice posts
- Bob comments
- Carol comments
- Dave replies to both Bob and Carol

If Dave's comment is displayed under Bob's (with a link to there from Carol's), I cannot see easily whose other comments Dave is replying to - or indeed that he's replying to other comments than Bob's, until I get to Carol's comment, which may be far below Bob's. Also, what would the "Reply", "Parent", and "Thread from start" links do? (There may be several Parent and Thread links pointing to the appropriate locations, but I think you'd need either to have different Reply links with separate functions (Reply here/Reply to all/Reply to some), or to move that bit of UI into the comment form.

I like both ideas: I used to be on the Well and sometimes I really miss single-thread discussions. It seems as though there might be a way to visually connect the answers and flow the comments and the conversation, but it's non trivial.

I wonder how other people have approached the problem. Some of those interaction designers are scary-smart...

This is what happened when this topic came up in LiveJournal suggestions. Memetic prophylactic recommended. http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/901581.html

(Hat tip to

james_nicoll and his associates for that phrase.)

I think this could be really useful on some occasions!

I really like this idea, especially with your example explanation of how it would look in the comments (I was not really understanding how you'd show it only once). I would suggest that the "Mark replies here" link, if replied comments are present, not go deeper but simply say "Mark replies here (x comments in thread)" if there are replies to your multi-reply. Of course, what does this do to the "expand" functionality if I don't want to follow a link? It'd be nice to be able to expand it in place (and have it have a separate class so it could have a different background color to show it was out of place) wherever it occurred, rather than go to the other nested thread.

I can see it being used for spam, as noted in some of the other comments, though. It definitely lowers the barrier for spam advertising on some news post.

And if I go to a news post and reply to 100 comments, including all those in the mail would be NASTY. I would suggest including the comment directly replied to, plus adding links to all checked comments, personally....

Oh! Also, where the reply first appears, should it note that it appears elsewhere? Again, I don't see that it can really link (what if 100 comments are used), but perhaps it could at least say "also in reply to X other comments". Or maybe it could link. Maybe to avoid spam there should be a limit to the number of comments you can reply to at once, which would solve a lot of the other problems and reduce (but not remove) the spam-usability.

Edited (Adding last paragraph) 2009-12-24 15:02 (UTC)

One way to avoid at least some of the spam is that you have to be logged in to use the mass reply. That shouldn't be a tough bit of coding.

And we can restrict to paid accounts, or we can make it so only people you trust can use it, or ...

There are many ways we can address those concerns, I expect. Mostly I'm hoping to either determine here whether or not the idea is good in and of itself, and how to improve it.

One thing that might be good would be to let the poster determine some of this stuff on the fly. If, for example, I'm thanking 25 people for their comment on my new fic, I'd just as soon have the mass comment post to each of their comments. On the other hand, if I'm trying to gather a group of sub-threads back into a single one, then I'd want to just post to a single comment. Also, if I haven't included references to individual comments, there's no reason to include comment links. This could be something that could be decided on the fly (probably non-trivial coding) or something set in the user's profile (maybe still non-trivial coding).

Point! For "Thank you" I don't really want all the comments linked together - I just don't necessarily want to have to type it 25 times. The ability to just add all the comments at once (but have them separate) might work better in that case.

I wonder if it should be a setting in the recipient's notifications as to whether to include all the comments in the email. It could either do that or just say "In reply to your comment and X other comments...."

That's an interesting point, too. Let the recipient control what they get.

Hmm. But if you trust JoeSpam and I comment in your journal and he replies to you and checks every comment...we all just got spammed because you trust him. But the logical barrier is "the journal I am in" and not a lookup on the username of every commenter.

Paid accounts, limits on the total number at once, no more than one email to each person no matter how many of their comments are replied, etc...lots of ways to address it, so it can probably be controlled - as long as it's thought out in the design. I think this one does need careful design thought, tho.

I like the idea. It as major potential for confusion though as explained in

thorfinn's comment. One way I think may help would be to introduce the reply under the last comment replied to instead of the first and add a link to a thread view allowing one to see the thread starting from the parents replies (with each parent printed in order of time posted) and going from here.
Something like:
mark posts: Foo Foo!
+ dw_news replies: Hey, cool!
++ text: see group reply by mark (jump to their reply, link here) (view group thread, link here)*
+ dw_biz replies: Awesome!
++ mark replies: Thanks for your feedback!
+++ dw_biz replies: something
++++ ... the discussion continues

with the group thread looking like this:
+ dw_news replies: Hey, cool
+ dw_biz replies: Awesome!**
++ mark replies: Thanks for your feedback!
+++ dw_biz replies: something
++++ ... the discussion continues

In effect this would freeze the discussion after all but the last the replied-to answers allowing only one thread to exist after a multi-reply.
Provided the group replies are clearly identified as such this could help lessen the confusion by not including the list of each following comments after the multi-reply.
* Maybe adding the number of comments contained in the thread to show that the discussion is still going on below.
** if the number of comments replied to (and their own length too) that way this step might become very lenghty.

This seems logical to me at least, but I don't know how confusing this might appear to someone else. I just hope I explained it clearly enough :S

Edited (Correct spelling, adding adding a point about length) 2009-12-24 16:28 (UTC)

It seems better, but it still has an issue if there are multiple pages of comments - I already read pages 1 & 2, so I skip to page 3, where Bob's comment is at the top and Mark replies to it. I don't see that this reply is also tied to other comments on pages 1 & 2.... (Of course, a simple mis-thread reply to the main post can do the same thing, but it's a little clearer what went odd in that case.)

If the group replies are clearly marked as such and the actual comment include the link to the group thread view (which show all of the parent comments), shouldn't this solve this problem?
The could be quick links to the other parrent comments but in my opinion this might make the link list a bit overcrowded. Unless it is shown like the contextual popup, maybe?

True, but it's another page. I like expand when it works - the fact it's still broken here drives me nuts - because I dislike needing multiple pages just to follow one continuing conversation.

Hmmmmm... I don't really know what I think of this suggestion. I mean, I can see that it would be useful in some situations but the potential for confusion is huge, as the discussion above shows.

I like the idea of having it so that instead of:
(1) Replying to multiple comments linking to the one that's in reply to the earliest comment

You:
(1) Reply to one comment
(2) Reply to multiple comments linking to that comment you've already made.

I also like the idea of first introducing it so that (paid?) users can only do it on an entry they made (that is, in their own journal or only on their own entries in a community), and evaluate expanding it from there.

I like this. Give it a gradual beta. Maybe start out just in your own journal - because after trying it, it may be something some communities would want to turn off. Or it might not. It'd be nice to figure that out rather than adding a needless option, or creating something that needs a non-existent option.

I find this horribly confusing, and I think the potential for abuse far outweighs the actual level of usefulness it would have.

I see how it could be useful on some occasions, but I believe the cons (confusion, misuse, maybe even drama) would outweigh the pros. So it's a no from my part.

Same here.

Sounds like a useful feature for some specialised cases, but with the potential to be massively confusing. If it's going to be used to merge threads, I think the content of the reply needs to be after all the threads it's responding to, with a stub on each of the tagged comments that has something to distinguish it from ordinary replies. You're giving yourself a big problem in UI design imo.

I think it's becoming clear from the discussion that the confusing part is the thread-crosslinking.

Essentially saving on typing, sure, I see that as a good idea, and pretty much works the way it does now in the sense that anyone can already click Reply, Paste, Post Comment, repeat. Spam prevention is no problem, there are already solutions for that.

I think it'd be best to leave out the the thread crosslinking, and just act as if the user did the above, leaving all the threads essentially separate.

Possibly you could notify as in reply to X ("and N other comments"), and possibly there might be a clickthrough to a different page which would display all N other comments?

Essentially it reverses the conversation thread flow, which is why it gets problematic to display. You no longer have an acyclic directed graph - you can get circles.

If it hasn't already been said... yes but with 2 limits at least:
1) how many comments you can reply to at the same time
2) how often you can use the functionality

OH! And maybe you can only do it to your own posts. *That*, alone, should all but eliminate the spam issue.

Proposed changes:

1.) Only allow it in jour own journal or in communities you maintain. (prevents spam)
2.) Keep threading behavior as-is, leaving threads seperate instead of trying to combine them. (prevents confusion)

I think the LJ-esque comment threading behavior is so deeply ingrained in some of us that changing it in this manner would be incredibly confusing. I can see this feature being really really helpful to people who get a lot of comments on fic and want to thank their reviewers without typing out "Thank you!" 150 times.

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