FAQ - Comments

Comments

What are comments?
Who is Unknown User?
What are mojo and trusted users?
What are trolls?
How do I submit a comment?
What are the comment viewing options?

What are comments?

Comments are the heart and soul of the World Forum. While the news, reviews, interviews and commentaries are certainly worthwhile reading in-and-of themselves, it is the subsequent discussions that makes this site come alive--comments create and sustain this community. Each discussion have a way of taking on a life of its own. Comments may be insightful, or controversial, or humourous. They may reveal differing points-of-view, or bring about new questions and entirely new threads of discussion. This is what the World Forum is all about.

Who is Unknown User?

And why does he/she post so many comments? Unknown User is the nickname that we use for anyone who posts a story or comment while not logged in, or purposefully wishes to post a comment anonymously while still logged in.

What are mojo and Trusted Users?

All discussion sites need to remove abusive material and spam, else such material would flood the site and take over. Since the World Forum is a community site it is defended by the community. The program on the server needs to decide which users can be trusted to defend the site rather than abuse it.

Our system assumes that the users who contribute most constructively to our discussions will care enough about our site to be entrusted with this task. To find out who they are, the system calculates "mojo" for each user.

Mojo is the average rating on the comments a user has posted lately. If your mojo is high enough, and you have contributed many comments lately, you become a "Trusted User".

(More exactly, mojo is not just a simple average, it's time-weighted, more recent comments have more weight.)

Trusted Users can vote to hide bad comments from public view. They can also see hidden comments and vote to make them visible again. Thus when people disagree about showing or hiding a comment it becomes a voting process, a community decision.

Since abusive comments can be very annoying, some Trusted Users prefer not to see them at all. You can choose this in your comment preferences. You can choose to see them always, or never, or see them until you rate them and then have them disappear.

What are trolls?

The most commonly quoted definition of a troll comes from an old Usenet posting on alt.folklore.urban:

troll v.,n. 1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on the Internet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you do not fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. 2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they merely want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he is just a troll."

Another commonly quoted definition is:

In Usenet usage, a "troll" is not a grumpy monster that lives beneath a bridge accosting passers-by, but rather a provocative posting to a newsgroup intended to produce a large volume of frivolous responses. The content of a "troll" posting generally falls into several areas. It may consist of an apparently foolish contradiction of common knowledge, a deliberately offensive insult to the readers of a newsgroup, or a broad request for trivial follow-up postings.

Like all newsgroups and web-based discussion forums, trolling also exists in the World Forum. But unlike the Usenet newsgroups, we can somewhat counteract their annoyance through the use of comment ratings. Intelligent comments will be rated high by readers, while trolls will be rated low. By purposefully reading only the higher-rated comments, or by sorting all comments according to their rating, you can avoid wasting your time reading the postings of trolls. The main thing to remember, however, is not to reply to trolls. It's what they want. They purposefully try to provoke a response from inexperienced users. If you are relatively new to disscussion forums, watch how the experienced users deal with trolls--by ignoring them, or sometimes by posting a one-word reply, "troll", for the benefit of others.

For further information, see:

How do I submit a comment?

Submitting a comment is much like submitting a story, except that there is no moderation queue--your comment gets immediately posted. Once you have created an account, logged in, and clicked on a story, follow these steps:

If commenting on the original article, you must first decide whether your comment is topical or editorial. Topical comments discuss the contents of the article, while editorial comments discuss the writing style of the article. If replying to a comment, your comment is automatically of the same type (topical or editorial) as the comment you're replying to. Once a story is posted to the front page or a section page, you can only post topical comments (except in reply to an editorial comment). If your comment is both topical and editorial in nature, please post two separate comments--one topical, the other editorial. Note that once a story posts, the default viewing option does not display editorial comments.
To comment on the original article, click on the "Post a comment". To reply to another comment, click on the "Reply to This" link beneath the comment.
Write an appropriate title in the "Subject" textbox.
Write your message on the "Comment"textbox. Things to note:

Check your facts. If you're not 100% sure that something you're saying is true, research it first to make sure. Otherwise you'll be embarassed when hundreds of readers make a point of correcting you.
Do not respond angrily to trolls. It's what they want.
The only allowed HTML tags are: <A HREF="[url]"> <OL> <OL TYPE="[type]"> <UL> <LI> <DL><DT> <DD> <BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE="cite"> <CITE> <TT><CODE> and, of course, the corresponding closing tags too.
Spam is not tolerated and will be deleted.

Click on the "Preview" button to preview your comment.
In your preview, make sure that it reads well and that there are no spelling mistakes. click on any links you have included to ensure they are valid. Note that unless you specified your links to come up in a new window, clicking on these links will take you away from this page and you will lose everything you have written. In IE, you can right-click on a link and select "Open in New Window" as a way of checking your links.
Make any changes you want and then hit Preview again. Do this repeatedly until you are 100% sure that your comment is ready to post.
When you are satisfied with your comment, click the "Submit" button to post your comment.

What are the comment viewing options?

Beneath every story are controls that allow you to set how you prefer to view the comments, so as to make reading and participating in discussion easier and more intuitive for you. The following options are available:

View: All comments, Mixed (the default), Topical Only, Editorial Only.
- "All comments" displays both topical and editorial comments.
- "Mixed" displays both editorial and topical comments while a story is in the moderation queue, but only topical comments when a story is actually posted.
- "Topical Only" displays just topical comments (pertaining to the information contained in the story or comment).
- "Editorial Only" displays just editorial comments (pertaining to the grammar, spelling, broken links, etc.), which can only be made while a story is in the moderation queue.
Display: Threaded, Minimal, Nested, Flat, Dynamic Threaded, Dynamic Minimal.
- "Threaded" displays the comments in a nested format, with the bodies visible only for top-level comments, all others being displayed in minimal format, which if clicked, displays the body of just that comment.
- "Minimal" displays only the comment headings in a nested format, requiring you to click on them to see the body of the comments.
- "Nested" displays all of the comments' headings as well as their bodies, in a nested format.
- "Flat" displays all of the comments' headings as well as their bodies, in a flat format.
- "Dynamic Threaded" displays the comments in a nested format, with the bodies visible only for top-level comments, all others being displayed in minimal format, which if clicked, dynamically loads and displays the body of just that comment "in place".
- "Dynamic Minimal" displays only the comment headings in a nested format, requiring you to click on them to dynamically load and display the body of the comments "in place".
Sort: You can sort the comments by their ratings, their lack of ratings, and by their posting date.
Rate: This is whether you want to be able to rate comments. We recommend that you leave this on and rate comments. Feedback is always a good thing.

Once you have made your choices, clicking the "Set" button will set your choices from now on and the page will refresh, using the new settings.

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