Comment recommendations
Follow @mediaukdiscuss
James Cridland posted on Wednesday 2nd January at 14:26If you spot a really good comment in future – one that makes a good point, or one that makes you think – you can mark it as a comment you want to recommend to others.
It’s a bit like the “like” button on Facebook; or the +1 button on Google.
Move your mouse over the comment, then click the recommendations box to recommend a post. (You can, of course, only recommend a post once – and no, you can’t recommend your own!).
If you’re logged in, you can see who recommended your post, too.
It’s a little bit of fun, inspired by the Guardian’s commenting system; hope it’s of interest and useful.
This has been rather more successful than I thought – I was thinking that few people would use the recommendation button, but it appears to be quite well-received. What’s nice is that it appears to add a self-regulating editorial “hint” to posters, which should further increase the quality of our discussion here.
I think, at some point next week, we might turn on email notifications for post recommendations – obviously with a big “unsubscribe” button – to further reward great posters. That might be fun to play with and see whether it works, perhaps… shout if that’s the worst idea in the world.
This email service has just been switched on. You’ll get an email notification when posts are recommended; and you can, naturally, switch that service off. (There’s currently no way to turn it back on again, mind!)
Is it just my browser (IE8) or is this feature now broken? When I hovver over the word “Recommendations” I just get the opportunity to send a PM….
I’ve used it before OK.
Not working for me in Firefox 15.0.1 either…
In both browsers the word “Recommendations“appears when I hovver, but has no hyperlink, but PM and # do have hyperlinks.
There’s not supposed to be a hyperlink – you should see a small grey box with a number in (even if it’s ‘0’). You click on that.
It should have worked for you because my previous post now shows you recommended it.
Aaah. So that’s it working in Firefox, but not IE8…
I think more weight could be given to recommendations if it were possible to see the members that have recommended the post in question.
As you’ll know, you can see who recommended your own posts (both in email alerts and here in the discussion area), but you can’t see who recommended others.
If we’re to expose that information, we probably need to delete all the current recommendations; but, to be honest, I’m not sure it adds too much to know who recommended what. In my case, I generally recommend posts that either I agree with, or that are nicely provocative that keep conversations going – but I don’t want people thinking that I am always agreeing with any that I recommend.
Use a social media account you already have to log in. More info
If you're not on social media, register for a Media UK account.
By logging in, you are consenting to a cookie that personally identifies you to us. Here's more about our cookies.
(And here’s a comment so you can have a go for yourself!)