Community Poll: Keep The Comments Open Longer

by Brandon on Aug 30, 2010 2:00 PM CDT in Miscellaneous

Since I began Acme Packing Company in 2007, I've always left comments open for only seven days. My primary concern has been trolls and spam, but some members have said they'd prefer leaving the comments open longer. Many of you have noticed there is a probationary membership of one day, which is done to keep the robo-spam at bay. It probably does a good job of discouraging trolls too. So it's probably OK to keep the comments thread open longer, but I would still like to close them at some point.

Below is a poll asking for your opinion on the subject. I can change the length of time to any number of days, but I narrowed it down to just a few choices. I don't expect any post would have a lot of comments after 14 days, but I don't really know. Let me know what you think.

I had been putting this post off for a while because initially I had thought about including a few other topics in with it. But I decided I liked the other settings: Two recommends required to highlight a Comment, FanShot, or FanPost, and one flag to raise an alert. Please use the comments if you think we should revisit those settings too.

UPDATE: The poll was open for almost a full week, and 14 days squeaked out a narrow victory. It's been updated to that as of September 6th.

Poll

How many days should we leave the comments open?

7

65 votes

14

74 votes

30

21 votes

60

16 votes

176 votes | Poll has closed

Tweet Comment 12 comments | 0 recs |

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Comments

I think the other settings are fine.

I voted for 60 days. I think that’s generally long enough for comments on a post to die off naturally, which is my preference. It always annoys me when I come across an interesting article (or an interesting comment) and want to respond but can’t. I find that annoyance to outweigh any likely benefits from closing comments early.

Alternatively, is there a way to allow different posts to have comments for different lengths of time? The default might be 60 days, but in some cases it might be set shorter. For example, I can’t really think of much reason to leave a game day open thread open beyond about 36 hours.

by cmadler on Aug 30, 2010 2:26 PM CDT reply actions

I voted for 7 for that reason

Most posts DO die off after a week. Look at the recent posts on the right side. Most of them naturally drop off, comment-wise, after the 5th day or so.

by Danwood on Aug 30, 2010 2:32 PM CDT up reply actions

My point is that, if they naturally die off after a week, there’s no need to close comments, but for the few posts that don’t naturally die off, closing the comments kills what can otherwise be a very interesting conversation.

As an alternative, maybe there’s a way to have comments on each post automatically close after 7 days of no comments? Then, posts that have died off can be closed (preventing ressurrection) but posts that continue to draw comments would continue to stay open.

by cmadler on Aug 30, 2010 2:39 PM CDT up reply actions 1 recs

Sounds like looking into.

I think 2 weeks is a good maximum limit. 30 is pushing it a little.

My kingdom for a spellchecker. Or Devin Harris. Hopefully both.
For all the crap we give Wil Wheaton, he can still tackle better than Asante Samuel...
Manning drops back to pass, Comedic.Sans and Wilfork come flying in and SACK him for a loss of twelve on 3rd and goal!

by OBrienSchofieldismyHero on Aug 30, 2010 3:11 PM CDT up reply actions

14 days

It seems like some of our threads are starting to last longer then just 7 days, and it’s probably because we keep getting new members. (or it least that’s what it seems like to me.)

by packallday555 on Aug 30, 2010 4:07 PM CDT reply actions

Auto-flags for Farve discussion posts...

My kingdom for a spellchecker. Or Devin Harris. Hopefully both.
For all the crap we give Wil Wheaton, he can still tackle better than Asante Samuel...
The various schools of the Big Ten should let Ohio State and Michigan know in no uncertain terms that dissent will NOT be tolerated.

by OBrienSchofieldismyHero on Aug 30, 2010 6:09 PM CDT up reply actions

Lol.

by packallday555 on Aug 30, 2010 11:40 PM CDT up reply actions

I am with PAD on 14 days!

by TrevorR on Aug 31, 2010 8:36 AM CDT up reply actions

14 days for in-season, 60 for off-season

seems reasonable to me

by I voted for Kodos on Aug 30, 2010 5:04 PM CDT reply actions

That's a good point

In-season, there are more posts, and people are reading the posts more often. So it’s natural to guess that in-season posts should die off faster than off-season posts.

by cmadler on Aug 31, 2010 1:05 PM CDT up reply actions