Perfect comment

As can be understood from the unequivocal headline above, it will be a question of what we use in the global network more and more - commenting on unique (and not so) materials on various social (and again not very) services, websites, blogs, social networks. (social social networks - as it sounds! Probably there is somewhere antisocial).

Why it happens? Because each site considers it its duty to provide the user with the opportunity to leave his opinion to any material (whether it be articles, programs or anything else). I can not say that it is bad or good. I believe that each functional should be created for the audience, and not to customize the audience for a specific functionality. Although, again, both situations coexist together quite peacefully - it depends on the type of user, and his initiative.
Apparently, I was clearly not in the wrong place, perhaps I’ll end up with a preface, I’ll just say that the article will go on about what people need from commenting, and directly from the commenting form, with which we have the opportunity to leave an opinion. Let's get started

Comment

Having researched today a rather large number of various social services, I noticed some general trends, which I will give below:

1. Each comment includes the name of its author (which is logical), the date of the comment (which is understandable), and the commenting time.
2. Not every service provides the possibility of anonymous comment. Why? It depends on several rather important reasons - starting from the fact that being anonymous, many users go beyond the bounds of decency, and roughly speaking - shame in the comments, which spoils the atmosphere of communication. An analogy can be made with a conference where a person comes in mask and kimono, and sits in the middle of the hall to take a crap. The atmosphere is spoiled, everyone is outraged.
3. Not every service gives you the opportunity to remember your data in order not to enter them all the time (this is in the case of the possibility of anonymous comments).
4. Not every service provides an anchor link for a single comment. It is quite convenient, but its location is always illogical, with the exception of Habrahabr .
5. Lack of numbering of comments.

Now, perhaps, I will sort out these tendencies by bone, chewing, so to speak, for greater persuasiveness:
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1. Of course, the author's name is required - this is the main way to identify a good comment from a bad one (yes, yes), because the audience for services basically does not flow like a river, but stands like a lake - that is, The commentators are essentially the same (plus or minus a certain amount). With this, everything is clear and does not cause any doubts in importance.
A little doubt begins to cause the date of the comment . In fact - I believe that the date is needed only if the comments should potentially be clearly more than 10-15, in order to be able to properly navigate the surrounding information. In small blogs, I think the date is absolutely not needed.
I have even more doubts about the importance of commenting time . Tell me - why is this needed if comments do not arrive every second? Those. the volume of commenting should be beyond, which is far from every blog, service, site.
Unfortunately in this version of the blog I have sinned the above, but I vow to promise to get rid of unnecessary data in the second version of the design.

2. Anonymity is a very subtle thing, and I would like to know more about it, but the note is not about that. I believe that the possibility of anonymous commentary is not needed on blogs (because a blog is primarily a means of communicating the author with readers of flesh and blood, with quite real names).
I also believe that anonymity is not needed in the services with a closed registration, if you do not want to get a ninja crowd at the conference (see above).
At the same time, with my mind-mind, I understand that anonymity is needed in some special cases like blog sites, i.e. in order to comment you have to start a blog, for which not everyone has time, opportunity and lack of laziness, in the end.

3. This is bad. Very, very bad, I do not even know what to write about this, because I'm too lazy to paint how bad it is, just insanely bad. But for such sloths, like me, this function is required, I hope you understand that the nonsense is higher - just banter.

4. Anchor is a unique link for every comment on a page. We need it in order to show some kind of a separate comment from, say, hundreds. You can’t force a man to count down the forty-sixth comment below.

5. I consider the absence of comment numbers to be quite logical, because the number of commenting is far from always overwhelming the psychological barrier of 25 pieces.

findings

The ideal comment, in my opinion, is:

1. Not anonymous - with quite tangible author, preferably by real name.
2. Without posting time, but with its date for greater orientation on locations.
3. With an anchor, which is quite possible to hang a link to the date of the comment (as many do).
4. Without numbering, if comments are supposed to be no more than 25, but with it, if all the same there will be more.

Comment Form

What form we have already understood in this article , and pretty well figured out their appearance, their possible use, etc.
What we often have in this form:

1. Name field
2. E-mail input field
3. Site address entry field
4. Input field for the comment itself
5. Comment button
6. Checkbox with the ability to subscribe to the following comments.

Now I would like to reflect on what and where it is worth having.
So - often the first three fields we like to place one above the other - like this:

What is wrong with this form?

1. The complete lack of space savings.
2. Fields for data entry are above the input field of the comment itself - this should not distract from commenting. In this case, while you fill in the fields, you forget what I wanted to write. Therefore - you need to move the information fields under the comment input field.
3. A check mark for new comments is located under the button. It is necessary to change their places so that the user does not recall it after having pressed the button, and quite consciously signed.

I corrected 3 comments above, and it turned out like this:

With this form, too, something is clearly wrong, namely, it is inconvenient to fill out, and visually it is not very organic — it outweighs to the right, and the human eye loves symmetry. What can be done? Of course, you are asked to lengthen the comment field, and put 3 fields for information in a column - saving space and apparent symmetry will help improve visual perception.

findings

At the exit, we received a completely adequate form of commenting, which you will see in the new design of my blog as early as next week.
What are its advantages in comparison with other standard ones:

1. Before writing a comment, you do not need to think about your name, which is sometimes quite difficult.
2. Subscribe to comments in a convenient place in front of the button.
3. Quite a big button - quite difficult to miss.
4. No visual imbalance - everything is symmetrical and convenient.

This is how a rather simple analysis is worth using when designing any interfaces. A bit of logic, design flair, and a sense of balance. Turn on the cerebral vestibular apparatus - they say it helps.

Source: Web Interface Usability Blog .
The author: Jaroslav Birzul (DezmASter).