Comments on articles

[hwfanatic]

I never ment to try and kick out the articles; my intention was merely for them to be better. But now I think I understand the distinction - articles are for site content, whilst threads are for discussion, and that is okay; thanks for clearing it out.

In light of what I have just said, it still seems logical for me to proceed with a suggestion to reconsider the commenting system for the articles. Some kind of new and simple commenting facility would indeed be duplicating functions, while SMF has a very advanced system for discussion. If you proceed with your current idea, you might end up with neat and simple feature, but a by-gone of sorts; in a way similarly to shoutbox. Uncentralised storage of comments and inability to search through them would imho make them less important. While, on the other hand, keeping comments within forum structure is,.. well better, and SMF is, we all agree, excellent system.

How would you make comments appear in the forum, yet stay linked to the article. Well, I can only suggest what I have seen working on other sites. For example on RPGDot. By default, newspost (in TP case - articles) have no thread for comments. Once somebody writes it, a php script generates a thread in the appropriate part of the board, copying the newspost content as the first post. From that point forward, any person that wants to join the discussion can make a reply to that thread i.e. will be redirected to that spot. This is a rough way to describe it, but I'm sure you get the picture. For a person who knows his way around php (you ), this might no be too much of work, but I actually wouldn't know. Maybe it sounds complicated, but in the end it would proove to be a more elegant solution. Imho, of course.

[zuma]

... keeping comments within forum structure is,.. well better

Agree with you on this one. A second channel for discussion can be confusing for members - some people would post comments, while others would start a thread - and the discussion about the article gets divided.

It would be very neat if somehow the comments automatically happened in a thread in the forum. Perhaps there could be settings for each article - forum name and thread title for discussion. If someone chooses to comment, that's where it goes (and creates the thread if it doesn't exist).

[Bjørn]

Not a bad idea at all. I will figure out how it can be done, especially the options you suggests, zuma - additonal info for each article. Adding the option of actually being able to comment at all , could that way be on article-to-article basis.

[Nokonium]

Not a bad idea at all. I will figure out how it can be done, especially the options you suggests, zuma - additonal info for each article. Adding the option of actually being able to comment at all , could that way be on article-to-article basis.

That I like, very flexible, can you make it so that you can either select to display the author & date as well as header, border etc?

[Bjørn]

Yes. It has been on my mind for some time.

[snowcrash]

I'd just like to add that comments on an article which are directly linked to the forum would be very powerful and neater, than an independent set of comments below an article. These tend to float, and rarely generate any serious discussion, acting similar to a shout box

I like how the mambo bridge discussbot does the commenting-forum.
For example on this site http://www.handheldlearning.co.uk/content/view/15/2/
if you scroll down it indicates how many comments have been posted with a direct link to the forum topic 

[Bjørn]

yes..I think that would be more beneficial than just a custom comment system.

[pcw]

imho articles should be without comments.

But posting topics into TP-categories would be a nice feature.
Intro & a "more..."-link shown inside the forum thread and in TP the full text with the first page of replies & a "forum thread"-link.
This should give TP the ability of writing "articles" with comments and such without.
And this way users can decide where they wanna read the text. Forum or Portal.

[ynohtna]

Articles was never intended to be part of the forum in that way..its a way to provide content without going into the forum at all.Commenting would be simpler than reply function in the forum, because its just a comment - you are not discussing anything. For that you would use the forum. Or this is how I think anyway.

Sorry to dig up and old thread but I was just wondering about articles and having comments on them.  I agree with what bloc said here in regards to article comments being simple replies as opposed to discussion items.  There should be a difference between articles and front page forum items for discussion.

Though, I'm not sure how they should be laid out because you don't want a a huge list of articles pushing way down the front page forum topics.

[iowamf]

Though, I'm not sure how they should be laid out because you don't want a a huge list of articles pushing way down the front page forum topics.

Agreed with both yours & Bloc's views of comments - comments should be just simple replies - discussion is for the forums.

As for as implementation of comments goes, IMHO, they should be similar to what is done with blogs.  At the end of the article, there is a link to the comments.  See http://littlegreenfootballs.com for an example of how comments are implemented.