News

Updated:

As many of you have already noticed, we recently launched a fairly major redesign of the Globe's website. Thanks in advance for putting up with some of the bugs and missing pieces -- we are working hard on stamping them out and/or putting the pieces back in place.

When it comes to our story comments, for example, we realize that there are some issues people feel very strongly about (inserting paragraph breaks, sorting the comments by oldest first, improving the navigation, etc.) and we are busy adding those features right now.

We'll be adding some other enhancements as well over the coming days and weeks, including the ability to quote from a comment when you are replying to it, which we think will help you follow the conversation on a story. So please consider this as version 1.0 -- if not a beta -- and rest assured that updates are coming soon.

One of the biggest differences you've probably noticed is that you can now vote on comments, by giving them either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Soon, you will also be able to sort the comments so that you can see which ones got the most positive votes or the most negative votes (you'll be able to sort the comments the old-fashioned way too, in reverse chronological order, or see the newest first).

By encouraging you to vote on comments, we're asking you to help us determine which comments deserve to be highlighted and which deserve to be buried (you can also flag a comment as abusive, of course, as you could under our old system). We want you to play an even more active role in helping us to develop the kind of smart and opinionated -- but also considerate -- community that we think most of you want to take part in.

In addition to voting, we've also added user profile pages (mine is here). This gives you a place where you can tell us -- and other readers -- a little about yourself, and it's also a place were you (and other readers) can see the most recent comments you've made and how many votes they received.

If you enjoy someone's comments, you can go to their profile page and click the "add as friend" button, or post a public message on their profile page. Soon, we hope to be able to give you the ability to rate other readers, by giving them a certain number of stars, and readers whose comments are highly rated and whose profiles are highly rated will eventually be given additional features (such as the ability to upload a photo in place of the generic avatars we have now).

In a nutshell, the idea behind adding these features is to try and turn our comment sections into more of a community of readers -- or rather, to reflect the community that already exists there. Just as behaving in a certain way can enhance your reputation in a real community, we would like your online behaviour at globeandmail.com to contribute to your online reputation. We're hoping that by doing this, we can help improve the "signal-to-noise" ratio of our comments, which many of you have complained about over the years.

Over the next few weeks and months, we will be adding new community features as well, including forums and groups, which will allow you to have a focused discussion around a specific issue, rather than having to do that through comments on a particular news story. In some cases, we may close comments on a story but open a forum where readers can discuss a contentious issue in a more closely moderated environment.

All of these enhancements are designed to make The Globe and Mail's online community a vibrant and active place for discussion -- and even allow the creation of virtual friendships with other Globe readers -- while still maintaining the kind of high standards for debate that we'd like to think most of you associate with the Globe.

As always, if you have any comments or questions, please leave a comment here or email me at mingram@globeandmail.com, or you can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mathewi.

Update:

Just to respond to a few things people have mentioned in the comments: we are going to give you the ability to see all the comments on a single page, so you don't have to go through multiple pages, and we will be fixing the navigation so that you don't go back to the beginning when you vote and you go to the top of the page instead of the bottom if you do go back or forward using the pagination.

We're also going to be adding the ability to quote from another reader's comment when you are replying -- so that other readers will know what you are responding to.

As far as the grey avatars are concerned, one of the things we are considering as an incentive to commenters (to encourage them to provide thoughtful or well-considered comments) is that after receiving a certain number of votes, we might give them the ability to upload a custom photo as their avatar.

To answer at least one complaint, I am also working hard to convince our writers of the benefits of responding to comments, and interacting with readers. I can assure you that we don't see comments as simply a "ghetto that will drive page views." I will say that one of the easiest ways to convince writers that your comments are worth responding to is to say something intelligent (it doesn't necessarily have to be in agreement).

There are many other features we have planned or in the development stages, including the ability (which many of you have mentioned) to "ignore" or hide certain comments or commenters. We're also hoping to have a better mobile version of the site at some point, and to add functions that allow you to comment or vote from your handheld (BlackBerry or iPhone).

And finally, to respond to what seems to be the most common complaint, we are working on bringing back the "mouse over" summary of articles -- please bear with us :-)