April 16, 2011
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The Comment REC: My Four Cents (Because My Opinion Is Worth Twice As Much)
So, in case you didn’t realize by looking at the apoplectic newsfeed on your homepage, Xanga now allows you to recommend someone’s comment, or, if you’re in a narcissistic and masturbatory mood, straight up promote every comment you leave. If you had asked me two days ago what I would think of this feature, I would have thought it was a bad idea. I would be wrong. It’s the worst idea this site has ever had (and yes, I AM aware of Lovelyish).
First of all, let’s be perfectly honest with ourselves. What most of us write on Xanga isn’t exactly Pulitzer material. Nearly all the comments I see are one sentence or less, with an incredibly sad amount being merely “First!”, “lol”, or the ever classic “ur a fag.” Even when people put time and effort into a comment on a blog, it’s never something I want to shout from the rooftops (and not just because my building is 27 floors high and I’m afraid of heights).
The Xanga Team works hard to improve our experience here, and this was certainly meant to continue that trend. I think the concept was to mimic the Facebook “Like” button without blatantly plagiarizing it. In not plagiarizing, they succeeded. In mimicking, they were about as successful as Rebecca Black was at mimicking music.
Since its release, I’ve noticed that production on Xanga pretty much came to a complete halt. Nobody’s written jack shit in the last 24 hours. There could be many factors to this. Maybe everyone had plans on a Friday night. Ha, just kidding, I know you too well for that, Xanga. My guess is a combination of everyone going a little too crazy hitting the REC feature for every comment praising what they said, and people who looked at their inbox, threw up their hands and left the site for the night.
I am grateful for one thing that came from this, the Microsoft 2000 of Xanga. I realized that a Xanga “Like” feature is a HORRIBLE idea. Xanga is blogging community. It’s not pure social networking like Facebook. The idea behind Xanga has always been sharing our expression through words (or, in some artsy cases, pictures). The instant we give people the option of expressing their appreciation of something without using their words, we start killing off the essence of this site.
Peace, Love, Krisko Disko
Comments (47)
Actually, a large percentage of the most active xangans were tearing up Times Square, then passing out and sleeping it off last night.
It’s not a horrible idea. The execution was off. If it had been implemented like the voting system on other forums, it would have worked out much better. In other words:
It should not notify anyone of anything.
A recommended comment should merely be given the equivalent of a thumbs up or up-vote or whatever term you wish to adopt.
Heck, let’s be generous. for every up-vote, the commenter should get a single eProp. Yay, free eProps!
I don’t like the idea of messing with the chronology of comments, but that’s an idea for well-received comments; have them display first in the comment section.
It should be a fairly quiet thing. Or it should get its own rec tab that we never have to click on, unless we want to.
@Airborne_Muse - Ah yes, but being from the Midwest I forgot about that. I still don’t think that accounts for everything, considering I have something like 800 friends here, and there were what, 30 doing that last night?
I think the concept’s terrible. but we’ll see how it goes once the initial excitement passes. When we got the chat option, everyone was chatting like crazy for the first few days, even people I don’t really talk to. Now, it’s no big deal. Hopefully, people stop rec-ing stupid comments.Hopefully.
Derr. Ur a fag.
Juss keeding!
I don’t really see the point. There’s a reason as to why I’m always on Xanga, and not friggin Facebook.
Man, when they don’t make upgrades, people complain. When they try new things, people complain. I am mostly just surprised they try anything at all to make the site stop decaying, since people just moan and complain when they do!
The idea was clever. The execution may need some work. That’s why you try new things. It’s easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback, when you aren’t the one with the responsibility to keep the site viable, something that hasn’t been happening. On top of it, every time they post a comment, they get trolled. With all the nastiness they get, I’m just surprised they haven’t thrown up their own hands and told us all where to get off.
Oh so agreed. I refuse to recommend one of my own comments or share it because I KNOW it’s not for the whole damn community to see; unless of course they want to stalk me and my activity here and comment on everything I comment on–though the likeliness of that happening: slim to none, but I’ve been wrong before.
Recommend shouold be equal to “like” in facebook. And I totally got laid last night. Muahaha.
@Prolixity_Split - Aside from the whole “best comment at the top” thing, I can get behind those ideas.
@nerdyveggiegirl - Truth. I forgot about the chat thing. You’d think they would have improved that first.
@textilerex - I just worry that all social networks are trying too hard to be Facebook, when that’s what we have Facebook for.
@SnowshoeTrails - The difference? They get paid to do it.
@MyHomeIsWriting - I don’t understand the people that check the box next to “share comment” so that everyone can see that they think Cool Ranch Doritos are the best thing ever.
@haloed - You may love me, but I kinda hate you right now. Goddamn dry spell! RAAAAAAAAAGE!
@GodlessLiberal - Yeah, I’m not really a fan of that either. I just don’t know what the purpose would be, if it didn’t do more than just let people agree with or like what you said.
@GodlessLiberal - I don’t either; are we all becoming that hard up for recognition anymore? I thought Xangans were better than that; guess I was wrong.
@haloed - Thanks a lot. That’s all I needed to hear. I’m as horny as a fox half fucked in the middle of a forest fire and you go and tell us that?
Maybe I should hop on the train, hit Yonge Street — see if I can locate one of those womenz that advertises in Craigslist under the heading ”Boning For Dollarz” ????????
Naw, I’d probably wind up with some damned transvestitute, – reach under their skirt/kilt and instead of finding hole – find POLE!!! I’ve already been up on one attempted murder charge, – think I’ll slither back under my rock.
@GodlessLiberal - And you whine for free.
@DickDoktorII - Don’t you hate when you’re looking at a hot woman, chanting in your head “don’t get a boner, don’t get a boner” and she totally does?
@SnowshoeTrails - I call it customer feedback.
Yeah, giving people options and choices is such a horrible thing.
Except when you’re out to murder unborn babies. That’s the only time choice and options are good, right?
It’s not necessarily a horrible idea, it’s just used in an annoying matter. I haven’t used the new feature, and have not had a problem with it so far (limited traffic I guess is a good thing in some cases I guess).
From what I can gather from this entry and the comments, I can see all the negativity it’s bringing. But I think it’s mostly there so people don’t have to restate in their own comments something that’s been said before or simply replying to the commenter with: I agree and “like” as I’ve seen occasionally.
Yeah, this site is about the use of words, but the rec feature is just a neutral idea. Everything is neutral until it’s used in a way that annoys us. It’s not the features fault, it’s the people who use it that way who are at fault. Why complain about it? The Xanga team worked hard to implement this feature for use, to complain about it wont do anything. Just accept it for what it is.
And it’s times like these I’m glad I’m not a popular blogger ;P
@GodlessLiberal - LOL I’m sure you do.
if you had typed this in a comment i would have rec’d it.
I agree, the idea is terrible! My whole xanga homepage is filled with rec’d comments…all of which I don’t care about! I care about the blog, not a pointless comment someone left on it!!
I say scratch the rec idea on comments and rec pulses instead!
@GodlessLiberal - I don’t go to that bar anymore so problem solved.
I still have nightmares though. When I lived in Calgary, the couple that lived in the house beside me were both going through sex change procedures. He becoming a “she” — and she becoming a “he” They were married, decided to do this for some reason. Anyways, their funding or whatever was cut off – half way through. She was beginning to have a nice 5 o’clock shadow, taking testosterone and had arms on her like a weightlifter. He was beginning to grow boobs, – still had to shave, – it was a fucking nightmare. Watching this sheman heman team was bizarre. Ever see a 250 Kawasaki Enduro flying down the street with some (person) – his/her dress flapping in the wind, – big biker boots on, pink helmet. Her voice went deep, his went up – talk about confusing!
Perhaps people have been testing it out?
Luckily for me most of the people I’m subbed to/ friends with seem to hate the comment rec feature as much as you. I’ve only gotten one or two rec’d comments. And I’d have written a post but I didn’t think anyone would’ve cared to read it, lol. But don’t worry. I have one planned for tomorrow. So your feed won’t be COMPLETELY full of comment rec’s.
Your opinion is actually worth six cents.
You xanga-stock went up this morning.
@MySpiceOfLife - i agree with you.
i think the comment rec idea is a little too much, but pulses would be just enough.
I was curious about the “share this comment” button – used it and was told to stop. What’s up with that?
I hope it stays, but dies down a bit after a while. The mass message system is just as annoying, but not used so much. Maybe after people get bored with their toy, they’ll slow down with it.
Xanga just crashed my iPhone. I think it was the “rec comments” feature.
It is not narcissistic and masturbatory enough. In addition to allowing you to promote your own comments in the read-feed, it should provide you another option to turn your comment into a post and a pulse simultaneously. That would triple your presence in the read-feed!
Next Front Page Feature: Today’s Best Comments (here, Xanga would transform your selected comment into a post that you could further self-promote comment upon, prop, etc.)
or
Top Posts with Most Rec’d Comments (so even if you had a shitty post but the commenteers so loved themselves to profusely promote themselves, they can still see themselves on the Front Page–damn the lousy post!)
ha ha ha
I really think the comment reccing is a bad idea.
There’s something we can agree on then. When I saw your pulse in my news feed about that (since that is how I found out about it) I was wondering what the point of it would be. I just hope if they keep it around that they leave a section in our settings for us to turn that part of the news feed off so we don’t have to see rec’d comments unless we specifically want to. Less news feed crowd that way.
And I had to smile at your title with the “my four cents” thing considering my screen name here.
This site is full of spam and we have no control over what’s in our universal inboxes, and yet we still can’t flag offensive/inappropriate comments.
Instead of a rec or like button for comments I would have liked to have seen an option such as four new smileys for comments with each showing the number of times it was chosen beneath it.
=D – This comment is awesome!
=] - This comment is cool.
;D - This comment is hilarious!!
?=/ – Huh???
=B – WTF are you talking about?!
; [ - This comment sucks.
>;O - This comment sucks and enrages me like Rebecca Blacks music “talent”!!
@DragonisMoon - Agree. I don’t think its a great idea or a horrible idea. Its not terrible because its basically just another “option” (the key concept being….its OPTIONAL!). I think it will be annoying initially, since like you mentioned, people will use it simply for the sake of using it cuz its new. I already have gotten a couple recommendations on one word comments…”lol”…and “cool”. Obviously these are people that have an underdeveloped sense of humor and for some reason thinks this is hilarious. But I think in time, people are going to stop wanting to recommend lame comments on purpose and since comment recommendations are at least specifically noted as such….its pretty easy to skip over them if you want.
“friday, friday, getting down on friday.”
xanga is not decaying. The whole country is!! Rec that bitches.
I don’t get that type of mass spam because I only have 60 friends and not 800 or more, so only 2 xangans on my list have rec’d comments. therefore, it is smooth sailing in my arena
I think there should be a feature like on youtube, where the comment with the highest thumbs up gets to be the first comment seen if you decide to visit the blog, rather than spamming inboxes with self promotional recs or other annoying things.
I really don’t care either way …. I think eventually (or hopefully) the lame recommendations wear off and all that’s left is the option, which might at least once in a while, be put to good use. But I find it weird that you went off on this long rant….in which you made some good points as well……..and then you go and recommend a lame comment yourself. What’s next, writing a series of Xanga posts about how much you hate writing Xanga posts?
Yep. Very rarely do I encounter a comment so absolutely fan-fucking-tastic that I’d even think of rec’ing it. Since the pulse feature started a few years ago, I think I’ve used that to post someone’s mind-bending comment maybe twice…that’s including both my active xanga sites. *shrug* Oh, well. Hopefully it won’t catch on. But, sadly, I’ve already seen a few instances in my inbox that are simply beyond inane. To call them inane would be a HUGE, HUGE understatement. Blah.
Shyeah. With you.
I signed up for Xanga to get AWAY from Facebook. Please don’t tell me it’s following me here…
I’m still being tagged somehow by people rec’ing comments..I don’t understand..>.>
This hasn’t effected me one iota, but with 800 friends I can see how the comment rec could become a hassle. Sometimes I can barely sift through my 20 or so friends’ assortment of Xanga goodies without something falling through the cracks. It does seem to be unnecessary as I believed Xanga to be about the content of the blogs… not the clever comments that sometimes follow.
There’s a reason I deactivated my facebook page, and people liking, for instance, that their fecal matter was not green today was one of them. I hope comment rec doesn’t deter my Xanga usage, or yours either for that matter. As when I stumble upon one of your blogs I enjoy reading it. In fact methinks I’ll subscribe. Great post, by the way.
Xanga has to add new features.
I have always thought xanga should have feeds on the sides of the universal inbox. So blogs should be in the middle. This drives traffic to the blogs. Then you have feeds on the sides that have pulses, recommends and comment recommends as separate feeds. This drives more traffic to sites and gives more potential updates without driving traffic away from blogs.
But again, xanga has to add new features. If they listened to the xanga community, they would never fix up and make things better.
i have written a post about this but you’ve done a great job slamming the new feature. or didyou slam it? the last para made me ask
I want to see what happens when someone takes the Superman III track and rounds the half-cents of your opinions off and banks them. Thats a lot of partial opinions!
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I realized that a Xanga “Like” feature is a HORRIBLE idea.
i dont think like you