Marking pivotal comments?

November 23, 2005 2:52 AM

Pony request -

How about a feature that allows people to mark certain comments in a thread as "pivot comments." These "pivots" are comments that drastically altered the course of the conversation. If enough people flag a comment as pivotal, it would stand out somehow. It seems like "100+ comment threads" are here to stay, and this would reduce redundancy and make them easier to navigate.
posted by afroblanca to Feature Requests at 2:52 AM (34 comments total)

you might want to go back to the drawing board with this one.

*flags own comment as "pivotal," shifts position in seat*
posted by Hat Maui at 2:56 AM on November 23, 2005

Hey, you're thinking outside the box. That's good. But I'm not convinced that its utility is that great, especially relative to its strangeness.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 3:20 AM on November 23, 2005

umm...kind of what Ethereal Bligh said.

To be functional this thing would need to in real time so that a newcomer to the thread would have something to identify. But something pivotal is usually only decided later surely in which case it's kind of redundant.

Or: skim.
posted by peacay at 3:26 AM on November 23, 2005

So it's both voting, and a distinction in long threads to help readability.

I think a division every 50 comments or something could be automated, and useful.

Voting... well, I haven't seen it done well. Slashdot kinda sucks and posing liars who stick to the party line get voted up, as do the popular kids. Bugger that.
posted by holloway at 3:28 AM on November 23, 2005

Obviously this distinction is typically done with paging of results, which I'd like for UI reasons and so that I wouldn't tax the server's resources.

It doesn't often get to the number of comments that make it necessary, but on 9/11 for example refreshing those threads got silly pretty quick.
posted by holloway at 3:34 AM on November 23, 2005

Ah, ok. I get what you mean more now.
posted by holloway at 3:35 AM on November 23, 2005

Well, it's a little different. You're also introducing the semantic notion of "pivotal"-ness. That's very different then a rating system where you rate "best" or "most helpful."

The "pivotal"-ness of a comment, in my opinion, is far more observable and less subjective then "best" or "most helpful."

You have to be able to teach people how to use it, and convince them to use it. If you follow the use of the fantastic comment flag on AskMe you can see that 2-5 people use it very frequently, another 10-20 sometimes use it. On top of that, there are radically different ideas of what makes a fantastic answer.

You might be able to do an end run around the human factor by tracking in thread quotes, more often than not the most quoted comment is going to be pivotal. On the other hand, some people say flat threads improve metafilter. I'm not sure where I stand on that, but it is an interesting notion.
posted by Chuckles at 4:23 AM on November 23, 2005

Generally, the 100+ comment threads are about a political 'earthquake' that is painfully divisive. The "pivot" in those threads can be trollish behaviour.

And the "pivotal"-ness of a comment is actually very subjective. Just because it "moves" a conversation in a different direction, it doesn't mean that much more. A perceived Authority can sway things quite a bit.
posted by gsb at 4:46 AM on November 23, 2005

I do not see the utility in such a feature, to be honest.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:48 AM on November 23, 2005

Oh, and something else. Marking a comment as a "pivot" is reasonable, but it does not take into account the content that may have led the user to make a "pivotal" comment. The "conversation" (screaming or whatever) could be just as important, especially if the "pivotal" comment is void of references.
posted by gsb at 4:55 AM on November 23, 2005

Great idea in theory, but in practice, unworkable: hard to grasp as a concept, easy to misinterpret or misuse, likely to be ignored.
posted by mcwetboy at 5:47 AM on November 23, 2005

I don't see the utility either. And afroblanca, you're doing way too much moderating here.
posted by languagehat at 6:04 AM on November 23, 2005

This is unconventional compared to established Mefi cabal standards, but it's not a ./-esque rating system, more something similar to "Best Answer" IMO, except rated for pivotalness instead of plain ol' goodness. I see no harm, and propose a limited-time pilot, after which everyone can see how much they hate (or even like!) it in MeTa, after which it can be permanently implemented or not.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:07 AM on November 23, 2005

it's value neutral in one sense - a noisy troll/derail is just as pivotal as a good contribution - and encourages bad behaviour in another, since it "awards" disrupting the conversation.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:20 AM on November 23, 2005

Neat idea that the site really, really does not need. I don't see any utility either. Sorry, afroblanco. It's like adding a laser to Tetris.

But let's get more pro-active than gut naysaying. Have you tested the idea in practice? What I mean is, as a sort of preview, consider moving through existing long-and-contentious threads and identifying the pivot points there. And document the rationale you used to call the pivots. Do maybe 10, 15 of those and look at the results, and if they're interesting, post your findings in this thread. That way you can get your teeth into what your idea, and other people can get a more direct sense of how you see it being executed.
posted by cortex at 6:32 AM on November 23, 2005

Why not just have a "Best Response" like AskMeFi? The FPP poster or one of the Admins could mark 'the best responses'. That would be fun.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:03 AM on November 23, 2005

I like this idea. Or at least, I like it compared to the alternative, which is the same point being made over and over again, and the same derails happening numerous times within the same thread.

What about a vote up/vote down system? And then mark anything above a certain threshold the same away a best answer is highlighted in AskMe. If it's abused, people will be there to vote it down (or up as the case may be). No karma points, no consequences, only the possible highlighting of points that have been made that don't need to be made again, for better or worse. Forget about even the concept of "pivotal", how about just "first comment containing unique point or argument". What about it not being available until the thread reaches a certain number of comments? What about allowing the feature to be turned on only at the poster's discretion, so it only appears in threads that will theoretically need it?
posted by loquax at 7:08 AM on November 23, 2005

I would rather have a troll flag. It could be simply labeled "PP"
posted by terrapin at 7:13 AM on November 23, 2005

Eh, modding comments really doesn't add much value. And when other people besides the admins can see comment ratings you open up a whole new can of worms. The solution, as I see it, is two-fold: (1) large threads should be read and perhaps even presented backwards chronologically since after 100 posts or so it no longer makes sense to even read the first pcomments since they've already been addressed etc (2) people should do a better job indicating their comment metadata using links. I know people here hate threaded discussions but perhaps simply having a 'reply' button on each post that automatically quoted the first sentence and added an html link (and used the rel attribute to say 'reply') would be enough. Like it or not, large discussions are threaded by nature. The trick is to get the threading without the crappy UI. (In fact, I never understood why matt doesn't bother to track metadata about the discussion structure like replies. This is really valuable metadata to have, even if you don't present a threaded view of the discussion.)
posted by nixerman at 7:19 AM on November 23, 2005

it's not like flagged comments ever get anyone's attention anyway.
posted by wakko at 7:20 AM on November 23, 2005

These days there's lots—most—threads I don't read. But I like the really long ones that catch my interest because, well, they're long. Lots to read, lots of interesting conversation.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:43 AM on November 23, 2005

We should talk about pancakes now.

I like pancakes.
posted by graventy at 8:05 AM on November 23, 2005

What we could really do with is pagination for threads of >100 comments.
posted by peacay at 8:08 AM on November 23, 2005

"Pivotalness" is one important thing to call out in a summary of a thread. But it can be a broad concept. If someone cracks a joke, and 20 other people riff off of it for the rest of the thread, is that "pivotal?" I think so. But not because it provides insight or substance to the conversation. Similarly, in pissing contests, people would vote "+1 pivotal" for particularly telling blows, as a way of interactive spectating. The utility of the thing would be overwhelmed by the abuse of it. If the consequence of voting pivotal means that the comment shows up in some new view, and therefore that more people will see it, then people will use it for their own purposes, no matter how bizarre or corrupt. In the end, "pivotal" would become just simple voting for one's favorite comments. I'm pretty sure that mathowie has spoken against a voting system.

The "pivotal"-ness of a comment, in my opinion, is far ... less subjective then "best" or "most helpful."

Yeah, so I guess I more or less disagree with precisely this point.
posted by scarabic at 8:21 AM on November 23, 2005

It was just a random idea that came to me. I can see that it has flaws, but I still think it would be neat.

And I have a lot of fondness for neat, random, flawed ideas. They're pretty much what I fill my time with. I'm actually totally serious about that prototype notion I mentioned upthread; if you think the idea is neat, run an experiment yourself; if there's something of substance when you're done, cool, and if not, well, at least it was interesting to check it out.

Having had some success and a refinement of your ideas after experimenting with it, you could very well put together a standalone site or utility that implements an unofficial "pivotality" function for interested parties, despite such a feature not really being fit for MeFi itself.
posted by cortex at 8:39 AM on November 23, 2005

Off-site post-processing, my man! Hop to it!
posted by cortex at 8:52 AM on November 23, 2005

afroblanca, somebody mentioned it might be a good idea to flesh out an example. Can you point me (us) to a good topographical example -- it may be hard work, but a figure or something helps things along.
posted by gsb at 9:22 AM on November 23, 2005

Metafilter: It's like adding a laser to Tetris.

I think that this would be neat to do as a plugin or alternate view that can optionally be used to show the topography of a thread, but isn't necessarily the default view. That kinda relies on one of you smart codemonkeys to impliment something... Ortho, if you read this, I'm looking at you. (Rothko too, as he's a pretty solid coder...)
posted by klangklangston at 10:39 AM on November 23, 2005

What I am suggesting is that we apply this thinking to conversation threads.

Well go on then, apply it! Find a thread and map this stuff using your best judgment, but leave out the comparisons to evolution. From what I remember threads are closed after a period, and there's no selection pressure. No real one, anyway.
posted by gsb at 10:51 AM on November 23, 2005

The pivot thickens.
posted by xod at 11:25 AM on November 23, 2005

posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:31 PM on November 23, 2005

Really, I just think that tracking a thread's pivots would be interesting.

Well, why didn't you say so! ;)
posted by scarabic at 12:50 PM on November 23, 2005

Actually sounds rather cool. Though I'm not sure I see the merit, unless the swaths of comments between pivotal comments were each tagged.

That of course, could be extremely useful. But who would tag each section of comments? Not Matt. Maybe the user who started the thread could be asked to do it, but people wouldn't. And of course it would violate the mefi legal principle of threads not being controlled by their creators.

And the shitstorms over mistagged blocks of comments...
posted by Count Ziggurat at 1:10 PM on November 23, 2005

You could write some clever javascript that tracks how long the browser spends looking at each screenful of comments and reports back to the server using AJAX. The server could combine all those numbers and figure out which comments were most interesting. Then Matt could ship your personal information to Google who will send you highly targeted ads and eat your family.
posted by jewzilla at 8:41 AM on November 25, 2005