Comments on: MeFi Projects getting public comments

MeFi Projects getting public comments

mathowie — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:05:40 -0800

A big tweak to Projects: new comments going public

The original (and still to this day) plan for the Projects section was to let members here show off their amazing works. There's a great deal of creative people here and it was tough to figure out a good way to share new projects with other members, so we built Projects along the lines of the previous mailing list setup by kindall. Originally, I saw Projects as being a great launching board for new MetaFilter posts. I envisioned maybe half the posts to Projects ending on MetaFilter, and with that in mind, I didn't want to discourage people from "promoting" posts up to MetaFilter proper by having lengthy discussions already on Projects. I thought it'd act as a nice incentive to not have comments at all, to save those comments for when the best stuff ends up at MeFi. After a few years of doing Projects, I've realized almost all the projects posted are quite new, and mostly not yet ready for MeFi (half the time I think "this would make a great post in six months when there is more content here") but they're still cool works. After Projects launched with no comments at all, we eventually added private comments to the creator, and though that was weird, I felt it enabled people to share their feedback, bugs, etc with the creator. People have long asked why the comments were private, and I stuck to the original notion that I didn't want to have two discussions about the same thing in two places on mefi -- that it'd be better to leave the incentive to push stuff to MeFi and discuss it there. I'll concede that the original plans for how I thought Projects would grow and be used here are different than what happens on the site day to day. Most projects are new, and only 1 or 2 get promoted up to MeFi each month. With that in mind, we're going to flip the switch today on new comments, making every new comment public, while keeping the old system in place as-is. All previous comments on the Projects site are still private and open to the creators to read, but you can no longer leave a private comment for a Projects post. Every Projects thread will get a standard comment thread like the ones everywhere else on the site, with full functionality like favorites, flagging, preview, and HTML shortcuts. This will go live later today, and we've kept the new projects posting page closed for a week while we retooled the system and allowed the last few projects to get their share of private feedback before flipping the switch on new public feedback. This is a long time coming and I admit the no comments then private comments thing was a weird design choice, especially considering the way comments are handled everywhere else on the site, so the new way of doing things should work out much better since it'll be in line with what members expect. I suppose this will create the two-discussions problem I tried to avoid in the first place, but I suspect it only affects a small handful of posts and people on MeFi could link to the existing discussion to say "hey, don't forget the 10 comments over there about this as well" (or we could automate that when you make a mefi post about a projects post in the future)

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:16:21 -0800

Yay!

By: self

self — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:16:37 -0800

Cool!

By: amyms

amyms — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:18:13 -0800

Great decision! *thumbs up*

By: burnmp3s

burnmp3s — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:19:11 -0800

Awesome!

By: self

self — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:23:03 -0800

I've always wanted to see what others think about the projects posted there, and was frustrated that a discussion couldn't exist. I see your initial reasoning, but am sure to frequent Projects more often now that you've opened the doors, so to speak.

By: pb

pb — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:23:56 -0800

Here's a test project where you can see the new public comments in action.

By: ddaavviidd

ddaavviidd — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:25:11 -0800

Thanks, dad.

By: enn

enn — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:25:23 -0800

I saw the note about this at the 'announce project' link a few days ago and have been looking forward to it.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:28:07 -0800

I tried posting a comment in the test post twice and each time the page reloaded when I hit "Post comment", but alas, no comment was actually posted...

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:30:54 -0800

There they went.

By: Bookhouse

Bookhouse — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:38:49 -0800

I approve, but fear the inevitable pissing-all-over-a-member's-project-turned-flamewar-turned-MetaTalk-callout that now looms. Hopefully, not for my project.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:56:20 -0800

I'll green-bomb anyone who flames any project, no matter how ill-conceived or misguided it is.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:02:20 -0800

I was gonna ask where the Projects-specific discussion note was, but then I realized that it's hidden when Live Preview is turned off (as I had done). Is there a reason that the hug/etc. notes are tied to the live preview? I suspect that it'll be particularly useful to be able to point to that note in the near future, as a Projects-specific comment culture evolves. Stop the asshattery before it starts.

By: pb

pb — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:14:11 -0800

good point, mumkin. I added notes for non-Live Previewers.

By: quin

quin — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:16:31 -0800

My god! Mister_A has finally unlocked the power of the color green, and then weaponized it!

This will surely and inevitably lead to yet another unchecked arms escalation, as everyone clamors to ensure that their nation possesses the ability for mutual assured en-greenenating. In this respect, we are just continuing the process of funneling vast quantities of money into the coffers of the military-industrial-entertainment-complex.

But as always, no one ever thinks of the innocent victims.

Visible comments in Projects is Teh Hotness, thanks.

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:51:19 -0800

I have long argued that public comments on Projects would see a lot more people make it part of their visit to Metafilter, so I think that this is a good thing. It happily coincides with the first ever project I'm contributing to the site, so once it goes up (assuming it gets approved etc), I'll see whether or not I'll be eating my own words.

Thanks Matt and pb!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:58:52 -0800

I predict a "When did this happen?" MeTa thread within three weeks.

I also predict a "When did thi-- oh." comment in this thread within eighty minutes.

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:04:45 -0800

I predict a self-referential remark in this comment right now.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:05:03 -0800

Public comments are also good in that seeing criticism/praise of other people's work can help to improve one's own work.

So, yeah: Yay!

By: snsranch

snsranch — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:14:27 -0800

Holy shit, this is great! It's going to be great for folks to get this kind of feed back.

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:18:47 -0800

Possible bug? My Project just got approved (see here) but the link to it from the Metafilter contact activity sidebar takes you here.

Apologies if this corrects itself after a given time; this is my first Project, after all.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:30:10 -0800

Effigy2000, you didn't put in a URL/title for the project when you posted it (I added it), so we'll have to make that mandatory for posting to get around those errors in the future.

By: sambosambo

sambosambo — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:32:28 -0800

Does it matter that the project page doesn't list the number of comments like other threads do?

By: niccolo

niccolo — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:42:11 -0800

This is great- there's definitely more incentive to post projects for me now!

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:45:29 -0800

On my recent activity page, the links point to:

http://.metafilter.com/1511/Projects-has-public-comments#32

Which is missing the "projects" before the ".metafilter"

By: pb

pb — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:58:36 -0800

Thanks sambosambo and Gary, those are fixed.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:04:07 -0800

Yay!

By: By The Grace of God

By The Grace of God — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:59:36 -0800

Reviewing and editing stuff is almost as cool as giving advice to fellow mefites. sweet!

By: owhydididoit

owhydididoit — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:07:41 -0800

good news, thanks!

By: nanojath

nanojath — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:30:21 -0800

Speaking of projects - are there any plans to add a listing of which projects you've voted for to the activity info on member profiles? It seems like this has been brought up a few times and every time the idea is well received... I don't recall there ever being an objection to the idea.

Not to detract from public comments, which are great.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:49:01 -0800

*Begins work on Hitler's Fat Gay Cat project*

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:56:50 -0800

Thanks for fixing that for me Matt. And thanks again for implementing public comments on Projects.

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:56:54 -0800

I predict a self-referential remark in this comment right now.

Your prediction didn't pan out. We have yet to hear any remarks about self in this thread.

By: Afroblanco

Afroblanco — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:47:23 -0800

I'm glad that you made this change. I actually had no idea that the comments were private. Hmmm. That actually explains a few things.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:04:07 -0800

What if someone's favorite project sucks?

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:16:51 -0800

Cool. I think I militated for public comments back in the day, but I neglect Projects horribly, and I hope this will raise my (and everyone's) level of participation and interest.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:19:13 -0800

Good call.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:00:35 -0800

This can only lead to trouble.

By: Malor

Malor — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:24:42 -0800

This is a good idea.

We get dual discussions all the time with Metas anyway. Nothing much seems to break, and everyone seems to figure out what's going on okay.

If we do end up with two disparate threads about the same Project... is any real harm done? I don't see it as being much of a problem. I suspect that anything important in one will be quickly mentioned in the other.

By: GeckoDundee

GeckoDundee — Wed, 28 May 2008 04:37:23 -0800

I don't seem to be logged in on Projects, though I'm clearly logged in everywhere else on site. Am I doing something wrong?

By: GeckoDundee

GeckoDundee — Wed, 28 May 2008 04:53:05 -0800

I notice also that my RSS feed for the Blue doesn't work, but the one for AskMe does.

Oh, and thanks for yet another innovation, I hope Projects benefits from it.

By: misha

misha — Wed, 28 May 2008 07:56:02 -0800

Hooray! I always felt like projects was the forgotten stepchild of the Metafilter family to a lot of Mefites. Public comments is a GREAT idea!

By: astruc

astruc — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:27:51 -0800

This is fabulous!

By: jeffamaphone

jeffamaphone — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:43:16 -0800

Mods: I have some questions.

1) Can we repost old projects to get public comments? Public discussion may lead to more comments.

2) I've often wondered if it is kosher to post the same project again after some period of time if significant new functionality is added. I think the answer is either: "no" or "use your best judgement but be prepared for deletification."

Thanks.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:15:26 -0800

1) Can we repost old projects to get public comments? Public discussion may lead to more comments.

Just and specifically to get public comments? My inclination is to say no, and just stick with the existing standard for reposts: if it's been a good long while since the initial post and the project has significantly/fundamentally changed, a repost is probably okay, but otherwise nope. If that means your old projects doesn't end up getting public comments, that's a bummer but so it goes.

2) I've often wondered if it is kosher to post the same project again after some period of time if significant new functionality is added. I think the answer is either: "no" or "use your best judgement but be prepared for deletification."

Heh. See above.

By: jeffamaphone

jeffamaphone — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:35:00 -0800

Thanks.