An important aspect of SciScoop is the ability to post comments about the stories that you see here. Comments provide insights, feedback, questions, new discussion issues, and sometimes humour. Commenting is a very good thing, and really helps articles develop into the discussions we like to see here.
Note: You must have an account and be logged in to post a comment. Please see "Account Questions."
How do I submit a comment?
Comments are submitted using an interface similar to that of story submission. Here are the details:
First, you need to get a user account and log in. See "Account Questions" for more on that.
Either click on a REPLY link on a comment, or by clicking the POST A COMMENT link that you see at the bottom of an article.
Choose whether the comment is topical or editorial. Topical comments are about contents of the article, while editorial comments are suggestions and remarks about how the article is written (or why it is written poorly). Use your judgement as to which type of comment you're posting. Note that when replying to a comment, if the comment is a topical one, your reply is automatically topical; if it is editorial, your reply is automatically editorial as well. Once a story is posted to the front page or a section page, you can only post topical comments (unless it is a reply to an editorial comment). If you have something to say, and it contains both topical and editorial comments, post 2 comments (1 editorial and 1 topical). It is fairly common amongst SciScoop readers that once a story posts, editorial comments are ignored (see What are the comment viewing options?).
In the body, enter the text of your comment (spamming is not tolerated). You may enter your comment in HTML or plain textm (look for the pulldown option below the entry box). If you enter it as HTML, the same tags which are valid for articles apply; <A HREF="[url]"> <B> <P> <I> <OL> <OL TYPE="[type]"> <UL> <LI> <DL><DT> <DD> <EM> <BR> <STRONG> <BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE="cite"> <CITE> <TT><CODE> (of course, all the relevant closing tags are allowed too). Plain text comments are converted into HTML; line breaks become paragraph breaks, etc.
Preview the comment, make as many corrections as required, and then preview it again. Sometimes several iterations are required before all problems are fixed, so be patient :)
SUBMIT! (I've always wondered why submit is more popular than more descriptive words, such as 'post,' on HTML forms.)
What are trolls?
Trolls are an interesting aspect of life. As defined by a Usenet posting on alt.folklore.urban:
troll v.,n. 1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on the Internet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you do not fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. 2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they merely want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he is just a troll."
Trolling is not all bad, and not all good. A good troll can inject humour into a situation, point out (in a rather obvious way) the idiocy of someone else's statement, or cause people to recognize their own bad behaviours. Bad trolls make themselves look like total idiots. While trolling is frowned upon, it is a fairly common practice. It is worthwhile noting that a troll is more often a reference to a comment, rather than to the actual author. Authors that post a lot of troll comments tend to get headbutted off of bridges.
What is comment rating?
You can rate any comment that you can see (a very small percentage you cannot see, but more on that in "What are mojo, karma, and trusted users?"). Each comment can be assigned a score of 1-5 (or 0 if you are a trusted user, but again, see What are mojo, karma, and trusted users?).
There are several reasons for the existence of ratings. Making noise less visible should increase the quality of discussions. Ratings could also assist in finding comments which are informative, funny or logically convincing. Surely a general rating system will not make it possible to truthfully, objectively sort all comments, but it should give the reader certain priorities.
There are several factors that can determine your subjective perception of a comment's quality:
Is it well-written and structured? Has a lot of effort gone
into its creation?
Is it of importance because it is true (to your knowledge)?
Is it of importance because it is a common fallacy which
should be more visibly refuted?
Is it funny?
Does it give a lot of new information which you were not previously aware of, but find convincing?
Which of these attributes you find more important in determining a high or low rating from 1-5 is completely subject of your discretion. Low ratings (1-2) are generally intended for posts of lower to average quality, but there is an important difference to high ratings: like school grades, low ratings can make an author feel bad. Nobody will stop you from overusing them, but don't be surprised if some people you rate down react emotionally.
A good guideline to determine whether you should rate a comment at all is to ask yourself whether you could explain your rating if asked to do so. If you could not, it would probably be wisest to not rate the comment at all. Rating purely on the basis of emotional agreement without actual knowledge on the subject or rational/logical disagreement is considered bad style by many users. For authors, however, the opposite holds true: Don't take ratings too seriously. Here, a good guideline for determining whether you should ask about a rating or complain about it may be: If you would write the user who gave you the rating an e-mail inquiring about it, then it is important enough to write a reply on SFT as well. Otherwise, why not just ignore the rating?
When more than one person rates a comment, the overall rating is the simple average of all the ratings. This is nicely displayed next to the comment name in the form of X/Y. X is the average, and Y is the number of people who have rated it. If a comment has not been rated, it will say "none/0". Steering Rating is where a person rates a comment beyond what they would normally rate it to counteract what they consider to be a "bad" rating by someone else. Steering is fairly common; over time, the law of averages defeats this anyway.
Readers can also change their ratings after the fact, so do not be surprised if it happens (maybe not -- few people do this). Remember, two wrong ratings do not make a right one. In the end, ratings do not really count for much; do not get too upset by them.
What are mojo, karma, and trusted users?
We do not have Slashdot-style "karma" here -- instead we have "mojo". It is a time-weighted average of comment ratings, in order to set the "initial" rating for each comment. The idea is, when you post, your comment will start out with a rating equal to an average of your previous ratings, from the past X weeks (with a max Y comments looked at), with newer comments counting more heavily than older ones. This initial score would just count as one element in the average, so subsequent rating by others could adjust it accordingly. If you have been contributing nicely (like everyone should), your mojo-ness will increase. If it goes high enough (rumor has it that it is 3.5), you will be able to rate other comments below 1 to 0 (note: this rating to be used on spam only!). Other people who are also "high on mojo" (i.e. trusted users) may rate comments from 0 to above 1 and beyond if they see an abuse of it. Once it is above 1, "neutral" people can go and also add their voice to fixing the potential abuses.
This system is kind of confusing at first; once you get used to it, it works really well and makes a lot of sense. The system works if everyone does "the democratic thing" and rates comments accordingly. That way we will not have any "special interest groups" running around controlling stuff. Luckily, you probably will not need to use mojo at all because the administrators delete spam and duplicate comments.
What are the comment viewing options?
>At the bottom of each story, you can set how you view the comments about the story. You have several options that allow you to make it easier to read and follow a discussion:
View: All comments, Mixed (which is the default), Topical Only, Editorial Only. How you choose to view is your preference. This option helps you if you are looking for certain aspects of a story.
Display: Minimal, Flat, Threaded, Nested. Of the 4, minimal just shows the comment names in a nested format. The other three show more information. Flat and Nested show ALL the body of the comments, in either a flat format, or a nested format. Threaded shows the comments in a nested format, with any comments that are replies to other comments in a minimal format. Try them and see.
Sort: You can sort the comments by their ratings, their lack of ratings, and by their posting date.
Rate: This is whether you want to be able to rate comments. We recommend that you leave this on and rate comments. Feedback is always a good thing.
Once you have made your changes, click the set button and watch them come into effect. We recommend you try several different settings. Fiddle around and see what works best for you.
