Make comment expansion a free feature

[callowyn]

Title:
Make comment expansion a free feature

Area:
comments, paid features

Summary:
Right now the ability to expand comment threads is a paid-only feature, and I think it would be conducive to the public use of Dreamwidth to allow all users to have it.

Description:
Forum-esque discussion threads, from kink memes to love memes to ONTD, are the type of community activity that promotes growth as a social platform, and as such should be facilitated by the journal default. I think the lack of free comment expansion, minor though it is, has made people reluctant to move their communities here from other platforms, and without active communities Dreamwidth can never really compete with the problematic-but-familiar platforms where the majority of fandom currently resides.

This feature alone is unlikely to significantly impact paid time revenue one way or the other, but because it's taken for granted on sites like Livejournal, its absence on Dreamwidth serves to put off those migrating (even in these times of trial-by-DDoS). Making expandable comments the default would allow the sort of long, rambly discussion threads that turn bunches of people into cohesive communities.

Poll #7727 Make comment expansion a free feature

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 74

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
28 (37.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (4.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
13 (17.6%)

(I have no opinion)
19 (25.7%)

(Other: please comment)
11 (14.9%)

Comments

[zaluzianskya]

You know, usually I roll my eyes whenever someone suggests making paid features free, but everything you said makes sense. Technically people can get by without it, but these days on LJ comment expanding just seems like basic functionality.

[existence]

I...hrm. While on the one hand, it would be extremely useful, on the other, I do wonder at the amount of load that expanding commets costs in terms of overhead? Because I have the vague-I-feel-this-has-come-up-before feeling that makes me hesitate to be enthusiastically for it.

[elf]

+1

LJ's comment expansion wasn't always free; it was a paid feature for a while. It might have a high server load cost.

[ninetydegrees]

Same here.

[lanterne_rouee]

I agree with this one. A few times this year, I've been back on free account status between subscription renewals. Each time I forgot that this is a paid feature, and each time it was the second one I noticed missing (after the immediately obvious limiting of how many icons are available to me).

It is tremendously aggravating not to have it; to the point where I just didn't bother reading certain discussions - theoretically, postponing it until I had the funds to renew, which was not a guaranteed future event.

I still haven't made it back around to most of them yet. Maybe I'll get around to it one day; maybe I'll just have to let whatever I missed go forever.

The pitiful thing is that some of the entries I was perusing didn't even have many comments, relatively speaking. Maybe 20, or 30, apiece, but most of them happened to be collapsed and it was just too much hassle.

Ease of reading seems highly likely to make people stick around longer and whether they become paid or free users, that's a valuable result.

[musyc]

I think this is one of those features, like more icons, that should continue to be paid, encouraging users to purchase accounts and support the site. Giving that away to free users eliminates one of the "here's a good reason to buy an account" talking points, and I wonder about the potential consequences of "but it's popular, so make it free" for other paid-only benefits down the line. It's high-demand (and I suspect resource-intensive, especially on high-comment comms like kink memes and such) but absolutely isn't necessary to using the site.

[callowyn]

I certainly agree that paid users should get additional features, and that those features bring in the revenue that keeps the website running, but since so many DW users are coming from LJ, where comment expansion is a default, my impression is that this is an instance where more people are put off from joining at all than would be willing to pay for a feature they thought they'd have automatically.

[aedifica]

I too am leery of "it's popular, so make it free," but I do see a point in "the lack of this feature gets in the way of a good user experience, so make it free"--and I think the latter is more what's going on in this suggestion.

[rho]

I think that this would have a minor impact on the growth of Dreamwidth as a whole. While this may be important for certain fandoms, or other extremely high-volume communities, these are not the only Dreamwidth users. It's extremely rare for there to be enough comment on my journal for them to collapse, and the same is true for my friends' journals and the communities I read. I'm not sure that the implied goal of attracting high-volume fandoms is necessary, nor even desirable, especially not if it comes at the cost of increased server load.

[chagrined]

I have mixed feelings on this issue and wasn't sure how I would vote, but this comment swayed me toward voting no, I think. In a perfect world, it'd be great if it were a free feature, but I think worrying about server load is important, and particularly if the balance is "attract more users to free accounts by giving free accounts a feature that creates more server load that may not be balanced by increased paid accounts," I'm ...much more hesitant.

Although I also think that when it comes down to it, the site owners probably know more about what the cost/benefit ratio would probably be, and whether it is worth it. So I guess maybe my vote is: it's a neat idea, but I would rather have it left up to the site owners and what they think the site can take, and what is best for supportable growth.

[matgb]

I'm not sure that the implied goal of attracting high-volume fandoms is necessary, nor even desirable

For me, it's a different use case--miss_s_b is an increasingly high profile politics blogger now, and gets a lot of comments from off site users, many of whom I'd like to attract here instead of them using Blogger and WP. I actually had someone sign up for a DW account the other day to comment on my riots post, some of these people will start using the service properly, and some will eventually pay.

Anything that makes the initial experience (ie reading/commenting on a post) better for them, especially for those coming from a non-threaded environment, is a good thing.

If the expander is more server load on top of someone clicking the thread button, then keep it paid, but if the cost is similar, then there isn't much actual cost, may even decrease it, so...

[arethinn]

I'm not sure that the implied goal of attracting high-volume fandoms is necessary, nor even desirable

Necessary, perhaps not, but I can tell you I'd love it if there were enough Harry Potter traffic going on here that threads in communities I followed started to collapse :P

[ariestess]

If it's a resource hog in any way, I don't think it should be a free feature.

[holyschist]

+1

[kyrielle]

+1. If it can be done without much load, I think the suggestion is a good one, but it sounds like it will have a load impact and funding the server oomph needed for features that demand additional work from the site is one of the reasons for paid accounts.

[montuos]

+1

[delladea]

+1

[sistabro]

I agree that this should be a universal feature for all the reasons callowyn listed above. As she said, communities are formed around conversations (And not just online either! Communities where the neighbors know each other and interact regularly are healthier and safer.)

But I would also like to point out that the Expand feature makes threaded conversations more accessible as well. And by accessible, I'm not speaking to making DW easier to use for those who may need to use alternative methods or assistive technologies to interact with the site (though I think it does have implications in that regard, too, I just don't feel qualified to speak on them), but that having to click twenty or thirty times to see a long conversation is a barrier to enter in and participation in that conversation. Or even just to read and understand.

Personally, I find there is an inverse relationship between the number of times I have to click to something and the likelihood that I will actually read it, regardless of how much I think I might enjoy or learn from the conversation. That's why we have shortcuts; why UI designers spend so much time on navigation design. Also, the mere idea of clicking fifty comments or more to read a conversation in its proper context makes my mouse clicking finger ache. :P

Yes, the Expand feature increases the amount of resources needed to process the page. Yes, not every user will interact in a journal or comm that generated a high enough volume of comments to make it worth it. No, it probably won't have much of an effect on the bottom line. But unlike more user pics, this feature and the lack of it effects usability. And while implementation wise it is a very different beast then adding the very useful 'Thread from start' link to comments, I like to think adding the expand feature is within the same spirit at least.

tl;dr The expand feature makes content on the site more accessible

[voldsom]

Side question... I assume at the moment that the expander functionality is restricted to whether the account that you are reading from is a paid account (it doesn't seem to be covered in faq 4). The reason I ask is that this definitely sounds like a useability feature, particularly if the perception is developing that this is something that Dreamwidth doesn't do.

If the server load issues are considered too much at present to make this a completely free option (which might require some serious usage modelling, research before anything can be specced), there are perhaps two options.

Firstly, raise a separate bug to streamline the expander, and defer this request until such time as the expander can be reviewed.

Secondly, consider shifting the emphasis of the current paid permissions such that if either the reading account or the account being read is paid, then the expander is available. That way, it becomes a much nicer perk for paid users, and should explicitly extend to paid communities, obliquely encouraging revenue.

This shouldn't be too much of an issue as comment pages and threads are the properties of their parent journal, rather than needing additional complexity on the main reading page. And as a paid user, it would make sense to me that as well as me being able to expand threads on any journal I go to, anybody who comes to my journal can also expand threads on comments there. If it extended to communities as well, it might also encourage community sponsorship.

Having it freely available to everyone would be the nicest option, but this might be a viable compromise to extend the functionality.

[matgb]

It's currently reader facing--paid users get to expand threads everywhere, free users do it nowhere.

Having it for paid users to see and on their journal, plus for paid comms, would be good and makes an extra reason to pay for a comm, good plan.

[zeborah]

I like this option, if the permissions aspect of it can be easily implemented.

[sporky_rat]

I'm of two minds (yet again!) on this. Server load, of course. I'm not down with killing DW's servers just for a nifty feature. BUT. It is very nice and quite shiny for people to be able to just one-click and presto! Expanded comments!

If we could do it in a way that didn't break the server and didn't take away one of the selling points of a $3-for-a-month, $35-for-a-year account, that would be fantastic. But it IS our paid accounts that helps pay for the server, so.... that's why I'm of two minds.

[turlough]

Yeah, me too. Which is why I voted "other".

[aedifica]

My "yes" is "we should do this if the server load isn't too much," of course.

[yvi]

In which case the planned "expand all comments" feature should probably be paid-only, because that one *is* going to be a server hit.

[allen]

Which reminds me, I should really take that bug.

(And really, having looked at the backend of that code, I almost wonder if it would be less server intensive to load up all of the comments on a page at once rather than handling multiple requests to expand each subthread...)

[kerravonsen]

I can see the pros and cons of this; this is my "I have no opinion".
Because, yes, it would make Dreamwidth more usable, but if it increases server load, then it isn't a good thing.