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I'm thinking that there should be two icons next to every comment on every storygame (+/-). Then, comments should be able to be sorted by either best rating, or by most recent. Also, there should be a trophy for having lots of top rated comments. I think this is the solution to our problem of getting lots of crappy comments.

Furthermore, for this concept page: http://chooseyourstory.com/secret/cysid/story-overview that Alexp posted recently, we could show the top rated comments at the bottom of the screen rather than the most recent. This idea is really important, in my opinion.

I really like the idea, because awesome comments get buried fast.

However the up/down rating thing gets complicated quickly (need to store the votes, tally them, undo them, check for duplicates, blah blah blah)... what about just adding a "Featured Indicator" to comments, and allowing a moderator to set the flag -- only featured comments are displayed or something.

I like this idea JJJ but I see a problem. Think of Youtube. 

There are plenty of top rated comments but some, not all, are really stupid. I don't know if we as a community want a top comment to be something like, "I eat pancakes." That doesn't help the reader, or the site, in any way.

skills had my thought exactly. people rate funny, stupid comments as 'good' comments all the time. :-/ and as alex has said, youtube is not our goal. i do like the idea though. maybe having 1 or 2 comments that are deemed good examples should be 'stickied' at the top of all comments. that way they dont get buried, and people get an idea of what a good comment is? i dunno, just brain storming here.

nate

I'm really against moderator choice comments. There aren't enough of us and our reaction time isn't quick enough. If it's a challenging endeavor and it has to be moderator choice then so be it, but if it can be community will, it should be. If the comment is inappropriate then we'll delete it. If it isn't, and the community likes it, then it should be featured. I think we won't get too many funny/stupid comments because we're dealing with stories here and not videos. The atmosphere is entirely different. I'm hoping, anyway. I just don't feel like moderators have the time/energy to stay up to date on every comment on every game, whereas community involvement does that.

While I agree with you on all points... it'll have to do for now. I think it's better than just showing the most recent.

There are 500+ storygames, and you're right, too many to go thru. But this lets us hit the featured ones.

Totally fine. I would like to request that a notification be sent to anyone whose comment is featured. If it's a guest account, and they left an e-mail, and e-mail should be sent.

I don't think that comparing this website to YouTube is an accurate comparison. I'm not sure if this is the only website you guys use for writing, but storywrite.com has a best comment system that works very well. The author rates the comments on helpfulness, and it goes from there. Also, the length of the comment is taken into consideration. The comments that stories on storywrite.com get are never like YouTube comments because they are always coming from other authors, which isn't a bunch of idiots on YouTube.

Example:

Comment One: Awesome story

Comment Two: That was really good. Author's pick of "Best Comment"

Comment Three: I didn't like this story for a few reasons. I think that the plot was very clique, and I felt like this was like every other high school romance. Next, you had several spelling mistakes on words that are very easy to spell, which effects the overall quality of the story. I think that correcting those would make the story feel more professional. Actual "Best Comment"

Using the storywrite.com best comment system means that even if the author picked a positive comment over a good comment, the good comment would still win because of the length.

Well said. Very well said.

I'm not sure about this.

1. There isn't a real correlation between length and strength in terms of comments.

For instance, this comment: "So, I wasted so much time on this. Not that it was a waste of time, but I finished it at once, chose love over will, and accidentally clicked forward...good thing I saved at the maze. I had to start over from there, but better there than the beginning. But, anyway, it was a fun read...sure I wanted to get my grammar Nazi gun ready at the excessive (and inappropriate)apostrophes, but no big deal. Also, despite the fact that the sex scenes were a bit silly (as if a 14 year old boy could last 20 minutes...the average is about 5) it made me sad to see the romance not work. As for the maze?...I cheated. :) But hey, I don't think it was a bad idea..."

is not as good as this comment: "An absolutely amazing piece of storytelling. The only problem (and it isn't one at all really, in my eyes) is that it is very linear, and cliché, but clichés become such because they are such good ideas. There is easily, however, enough unique ideas in the story that make any negatives infinitely small compared to the elegance of the story. I could see this actually being publishable, and would pay for this, knowing how good it is."

2. The author shouldn't necessarily have a say in which comments are the best. A community vote is appropriate, but having author's choosing could simply lead to the most positive comments being consistently labeled as the top comments. From there, anyone seeking top comments (for the EXP points), will just write positive comments. If it's community choice (as in the comments which most represent the voice of the community), then the incentive will be to constructively speak one's mind, rather than appeal to the author.