I love the comments section here at SaabsUnited. Our readers are some of the most experienced and social Saab enthusiasts in the world. The comments from you guys (and girls) are interesting, educational and inspirational for us. For that, I’m very grateful.
Sometimes though, the comments section gets out of hand. Comments without relevance are posted. Words that wouldn’t be said face-to-face are used. Some seem to forget that we all are Saab enthusiasts. The “Saab spirit” is lost and that’s no fun at all.
I’ve been thinking about this for some time.
First off, we don’t want to moderate the comments section. We’re all adults with a common interest and we should be able to get along here. Of course, if someone clearly missbehaves then we’ll kick him/her out of here. But that’s really the worst case scenario.
The most relevant and interesting comments should be highlighted and brought to the top of the comments section. Some posts here have more than 100 comments and it’s not always easy to find the good ones. An upvote/downvote system is required for this.
And again, SaabsUnited should be SaabsUnited. The easiest solution would be to implement an external comments solution, such as Disqus, Facebook comments or similar. They all have built-in support for up/downvotes, popular comments, social login etc. But then it wouldn’t be SaabsUnited anymore.
Finally, it should be easy to comment. The comments have to load fast and work just as well in a regular web browser as with a smart phone. No unneccesary clutter.
After a lot of research, I’ve now improved the comments section here at SaabsUnited. It’s easier to see the comment threads, you can up/downvote comments, the most popular comments are listed first, it’s easy to subscribe to comment replies and you can even login with your Facebook account here.
– Facebook login at SaabsUnited
The Facebook functionality is only active for those who choose to use it. I personally don’t use Facebook and I strongly dislike all kinds of tracking (SaabsUnited does not track those who doesn’t want to be tracked). So the Facebook integration is minimal. I’m planning to add similar (minimal) login support for Twitter as well.
If you login using Facebook you can also connect your Facebook account to your SaabsUnited account (or create a new SU account). In this way, you’ll be logged in to SaabsUnited if you’re logged in to Facebook. But note that (almost) everything you do online is tracked by Facebook if you’re logged in at them.
So, feel free to check out and test the improved comments in the comment field to this post. Let me know if there’s any particular feature that you would like to see added to the comments section as well.