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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: Swimsuit view | Main | Next: Road signs stack
July 21, 2006 11:31 AM
Broken: (comment) About the new comments-system
Hi, TIB readers -
If you've tried to add a comment today you might have noticed that we now require registration with the TypeKey system in order to post comments.
I know it's a hassle, but you only have to go through registration once, and then you remain signed in. Also, since it then remembers your signup info, you can post comments even more easily than before (since you don't have to type your name and URL every time).
We made this change because in recent months we've seen too many irrelevant comments, drowning out the legitimate comments, and forcing us to spend time manually cleaning things up.
We'll try this out for awhile, and I hope it raises the signal-to-noise level in the comments section. If not, there's always what other popular blogs like Boing Boing and Kottke have done - turn off comments altogether - but I hope to avoid that.
And now, the comments section for this post. Go ahead, let us know why this is such a broken idea ;) -mh
How is this going to stop the irrelevant comments? The people posting those comments can sign in just as easily as the rest of us. Mind you it's not a horrible idea, it should act as a deterent. Not a Broken idea Mark, it's just that we don't like much change here. Now that I'm signed in as a user it's no big deal. It's just one more username and password in my life.
Of course, this one TypeKey registration can be used on any weblog which uses TypeKey, which is quite a lot of them now. Of all the ways to add registration this is one of the better ones. TypeKey was pretty well-thought-out, too, like with having a different display name than username, so you don't have to have a hissyfit if someone else has already taken the name that you hold so dear.
It is very easy to block someone unless that person constantly gets new email addresses and then why would he? Just to post garbage on this site?
I found it very easy. I'm glad to help keep the forum relevant.
Happy to finally know what TypeKey is, after seeing it everywhere.
Hunk o' mercy! Great shades of Caesar's ghost!! There is no way that this will stop me from posting all sorts of irrelevant nonsense. I can always create a new account if I'm blocked.
By the way, did I mention that I like wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide posts.
I think that any mandatory registration scheme is inherently broken, so I'm afraid my vote is that this is a lousy user experience.
Though you'll no doubt note that I've gone through it to post this.
My biggest problem is that it smacks of making the USER jump through extra hoops to solve a problem on the PROVIDER'S end. It's too much work to edit posts, so the posters have to do the work instead. Fine for the site provider, especially when the site isn't their primary business (like this one), but a hassle for the user.
When the user is an actual CUSTOMER that is a major experience blunder that can cost a site valuable business. I no longer subscribe to a forum site that I used to contribute a lot of work to and put a lot of effort into keeping up and running, not to mention supporting with my continued subscription fees. When the site owners instituted policy after policy that eased their workload considerably but made the experience for the users more and more frustrating, I just gave up. They lost both my contributions and my business.
In the meantime, I wonder how long it will take for a username/password to show up on BugMeNot and other such sites to allow posting without registration.
Put one emphatic checkmark in the 'broken' column for me, thanks.
I like this because I don't have to type in my name and stuff every single time I want to make a comment.
To quote myself:
"Dear Mark,
The new comments system would be great, except for one thing: I CAN'T POST COMMENTS ON OLDER POSTS THAT I HAVE ONLY RECENTLY READ AND WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please fix this imediately.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Dylan"
Okay, so that took about 5 minutes, since I was already registered, but didn't remember being registered. Then once I received my pw, I logged in to find out that my email address wasn't verified. That's all done, and hopefully I won't have to go through it again. I think the new system will work out fine as long as she snail makes it over.
Long live the snail.
hmm...well I had troubles trying to log on in Safari, when i clicked login there were a few redirects and it led me back to this comments page...but firefox seems to work fine...
How will this help with comment spam/irrevelant comments? Anyone could just as easily sign up for a new account, and start spamming...
Anyways, all you Internet Explorer users are broken! Use a *real* browser, like Opera or Firefox :)
Not everyone can install Firefox on the computer they are using. For example libraries, schools and internet cafés won’t let you. Also, many offices require that all software be installed by the IT department, and don't consider Firefox to be a necessity.
Therefore, not being compatible with IE is even more broken than not being compatible with Firefox because anyone who has Windows probably has IE installed on their computer, even if they don’t like to use it.
MY SCHOOL HAS FIREFOX AND SAFARI(something also better than IE) ON ALL THEIR MACS.
P.S. Different Sean here.
IE doesn't work! I just tried. I'll bet there are lots of people wanting to say this but couldn't. Someone tell me if netscape works. To those with only IE:
Mozilla Firefox 1.5 http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
Netscape Browser 8.1
http://browser.netscape.com/ns8/
Both are free, and work for PC and Mac.
I'm somewhat new to posting (not new to the site), and I never had used the Ye Olde Systeme. I know what 'name' and 'email' mean, but what am I supposed to type in 'URL'? Please tell me.
Well, that can't be safe because there is a SLIGHT chance nobody is in 1st Class and some one would have to run up and get it. But, by the time they get it, they may be DEAD... Very morbid.
Also, when I first looked at the pic, I thought "Wow! They finally made a hammer that smashes Windows XP!! :D
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Swimsuit view | Main | Next: Road signs stack
i think this is a much better way to do it as the sign up process is not much of a hassle and this way theres no irrevelant messages that people just randomly post
i think turning off comments would be a bad thing because well then theres no way we can say what we want to say and so theres not much interaction
Posted by: ragingbullxxx at July 21, 2006 11:42 AM