Digg, the quintessential Web 2.0 social news site has released an update to its comment system. This is a much needed update to a crumbling system. The previous incarnation use to kill my browser if their were more than a couple of hundred comments, the new system is faultless – even on the announcement of this news, which had almost 2,000 comments.
Overview of Changes
The new system is fairly comprehensive and leaves little untouched. The changes can be broken down into 4 key areas:
Presentation
The new comment system pages the comments in blocks of 50 and only shows the first level of conversation by default.
“The display of each page of comments is now managed by a processing queue, which allows the pages to load quickly without hammering your browser with all of the discussions and replies at once”
The new system also hides comments by un-important users, highlighting the interesting comments and “you can now click the Digg count to see the total number of Diggs and buries for each comment”.
Sorting
The Digg team have added an fascinating new sort order. Controversy.
“Controversial sort … highlights comments with the most divergent ratings from Digg users”
It’s also possible to filter comments made by you or your friends – very handy for finding the opinion of people you know among a sea of dross.
Posting
Posting is now easier than before. A bigger, expanding text area and larger font size make posting a comment more accessible and a 5 minute edit window lets you tweak your opinion.
And for the indecisive among you, you can also now change your up/down vote for any comment as much as you like.
Preferences
Logged in users can customise the default comment display to their hearts content.
“you can now choose how many discussions to initially load as well as whether discussions should be collapsed or expanded by default”
Congratulations to the Digg team for listening to the community and delivering a much needed improvement! Digg might not quite be dead. Yet.
