TL;DR An experiment is launching on comments. It will not impact comments that are clarification or improvement related but will direct all others to discussions. A new option to say thanks will be added, to be shared privately with the author.
Comments are a common feature on the Internet. Most, if not all, people understand the point of comments and how to use them… Except on the Stack Exchange network, where comments are meant to be ephemeral and primarily for the purpose of improving Q&A. This is different from how the rest of the Internet uses comments.
Approximately twenty-one thousand unique users are trying to comment every month but are prevented from doing so due to the 50 reputation requirement. This requirement has its merits: it’s an effective anti-spam filter and denotes that at least some time has been spent around the network. For those under that rep limit we want to provide an opportunity to engage in some way.
This unique usage presents a poor experience for new users. And we don’t believe this is an onboarding issue: the comments text box is clear about what a comment should be for. As a company our problems stem from two things:
- A commenting system designed purposefully, and a community culture that supports this status quo. Neither the company or the community are interested in making any changes to the status quo on this issue.
- We currently lack any kind of pressure release for the actions that many users instinctively want to engage in (thank yous, subjective conversations, etc).
This results in frustrated users, and to outsiders ends up looking like a strange aversion to regular social niceties. Just to level-set here, from our help center article on commenting we tell people to comment for the following reasons:
- Request clarification from the author;
- Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
- Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).
But, as a community and staff we had decided we don’t want them to comment for the following reasons:
- Suggesting corrections that don't fundamentally change the meaning of the post; instead, make or suggest an edit;
- Answering a question or providing an alternate solution to an existing answer; instead, post an actual answer (or edit to expand an existing one);
- Compliments which do not add new information ("+1, great answer!"); instead, upvote it and pay it forward;
- Criticisms which do not add anything constructive ("-1, see previous comments you scallywag!"); instead, downvote (and provide or upvote a better answer if appropriate);
- Secondary discussion or debating a controversial point; please use chat instead;
- Discussion of community behavior or site policies; please use meta instead.
None of this will change for this experiment.
What's new
We have already established what appropriate commenting should look like, and after doing some analysis on comments, we found that deleted comments tend to fall into a few different categories:
- Some variation of thank you
- Off-topic conversations
- Somewhat related but irrelevant conversations
- Undesirable content (insults, spam, etc)
During the experiment, when users click the ‘Add a Comment’ button on Q&A they are not the author of, they will see the following options:
- Comment with a clarification: What comments are currently intended for
- Ask a follow-up question: A pathway to Discussions
- Say thanks, this helped me: Self-explanatory
Asking a follow-up question (Discussions have entered the discussion)
We know that users are already attempting to have subjective conversations about the contents of posts on Q&A posts. This is an attempt to encourage that, but instead in a place where they can belong and potentially thrive without hiding them in chatrooms that have low exposure and are difficult to continue a conversation after they have died down. To be very clear, the failure or success of this particular experiment has no impact on chat and its place on the network.
We see this as a preferable option, as this is a way for users to start a conversation about the content they see that might not be geared towards appropriate Q&A content for a number of reasons, such as:
- Subjective opinions
- Learning opportunities
- Related, but otherwise off topic conversations
- No rep limit
This is also a natural next step for the Discussions product by integrating it more closely to Q&A, where it can benefit from the additional exposure without distracting from users who are not particularly interested in or undermining the primary purpose of commenting, which is to improve the content.
With that said, this is what it will look like when a user selects the “Ask a follow-up question” option.
First a modal will pop up with a title and body field. When posted it will create a discussion post that is visible under /discussions. It will be auto-filled with the question’s tags, a link back to the post and a comment left on the Q&A itself indicating a discussion has been created. The author and previous commenters of the Q&A will be notified of the discussion creation as well.
User saying thanks
We know that approximately between 6-7k comments are deleted every month for saying some variation of thanks to the author regarding content on Stack Overflow. We agree with the deletion of thank you comments; they don’t belong in the comments. We do think that saying thanks in some way does belong, and no, we are not bringing the emojis back. Instead, we are going to introduce a method for people to privately say thanks.
Saying thanks won’t include any of the following:
- Private messages
- Free form option for harassment
- Visible to the public
We want a thank you feature to be a thank you, just a quiet, private acknowledgment that an author helped them out and they appreciate their work. When a reader uses the “thank you” option, a thank you notification will go to the author. If the user doing the thanking has upvoting privileges, then this will also upvote the post. This upvote can be undone just like any other vote. If a user has the upvoting privilege, the first banner will be shown. If the user does not, they will see the second banner.
We think that adding a dedicated pathway for users to offer thanks would be more constructive than simply deleting those comments. Establishing appropriate spaces for these interactions could better guide users toward more successful contributions. We want to enable these interactions for those who want to have them in a way that doesn’t interfere with the current Q&A model.
We also want to point out that gratitude is something that some people enjoy receiving and is fundamentally different from getting reputation. For some, it could motivate them to contribute more. Reputation, in theory, signals quality or usefulness. Thank yous are a way of making things just a little more human and offering a signal of gratitude, especially for those who have no way of indicating the usefulness of a post otherwise.
What we will measure
Ultimately, we want to experiment with commenting in this way so that instead of the community having to continuously moderate undesirable user activity, these users are appropriately engaging in spaces that are acceptable for them to do so. We will be evaluating a few different things:
- Increase in user contributions
- Positive engagement with the thank you feature
- Comment deletions going down
- Discussion posts creations going up (with additional insight into how posts perform)
Some What ifs
- We understand that some users are not interested in receiving thank-you notifications. If the experiment is made permanent, we will consider adding an option to turn these notifications off.
- Some people may want to have some insight into how many thank yous they have received. If these experiments graduate, we will think about adding something on their profiles to understand their impact, potentially private or public.
Next Steps
We anticipate this experiment will be launched in late February or early March. We’ll continue to provide updates as we incorporate feedback from this post.
In particular, we would be interested in hearing feedback on any of the following items:
- Copy (i.e. the wording of text in dialog boxes and the like)
- Feature flows
- Any acceptable comment use cases we missed
- Anything else you want to share
We will monitor this post for feedback until January 29th, 2025.
