Forum: Bug Report and Feature Requests

Firstly, I think that comments on stories have, for the most part (and so trolls aside), been a really, really strong addition to the site. I say that as both a reader and an author. As a reader, I very much enjoy finding out what others think of the story and if it matches my own thoughts or not. And as an author, I find them very, very useful feedback.

That said…

I'm currently reading a recently completed long serial. It's very long. 50+ chapters. And there are 33 "pages" of reader comments on it. But… The comments only appear at the end of the whole story. And as they are currently displayed in "reverse chronological order", it means that to read comments related to the chapter I'm on, I have to hop to the end of the story, then to the last page of comments and work my way back. Also, since the comments only note the date of posting, I have to open the story index to check the dates of the chapter postings. And even then, things might not match up.

Further, let's say that I'm reading "behind" the posting of chapters, or after the completion of the piece. If I wanted to add a comment related to, say, chapter 15 of 60, I can't currently do that without going to the last chapter.

So… My suggestion is this. Could comments be attached to chapters in serials rather than the story as a whole? Thus giving the reader an opportunity to comment on each chapter, giving other readers the chance to read comments related to where they are in the story, and giving the author even better feedback than the comments currently do.

I say again, I really like story comments. I think they are really useful. This is just a suggestion for possible "improvement". I don't see how it would be possible to implement retrospectively, but could it be done for new serials going forward?

I've seen other story sites struggle with this. The best I've seen is the system at Archive of Our Own, which allows readers to view serials by chapter at a time (only option here) or entire story at once. When displaying by chapter, only comments for that chapter appear. When displaying the whole thing, all comments appear, with a note on each one of what chapter it was entered on, or nothing if it was entered on the whole thing.

The big issue there is there's no sorting or filtering options, so you get all comments in chronological order, which means for popular fics it's really hard to find comments on the story as a whole, rather than immediate responses to the latest chapter.

I don't allow comments on my stories. Several reasons, but one of the more important reasons is spoilers. If one reader is reading Chapter 7 and another is reading Chapter 12, comments made give away what will transpire in the intervening chapters.

I also don't check the comments made on other author's stories for the same reason. I want to anticipate what will happen.

My suggestion is this. Could comments be attached to chapters in serials rather than the story as a whole?

What if the reader wants to make a general point about the story? Should that still be attached to a single chapter?

AJ