Upvoting Comments Feature Now Live

Comment Upvoting

Starting today, members will be able to upvote other comments that they find helpful, insightful, amusing, etc. This is done simply by clicking on the upvote button for that comment.

Note that when you post a comment of your own, you will automatically upvote it.

In addition, we've adjusted the comment sorting options to present them as a simple dropdown list and added an option that allows members to see the most upvoted comments on any piece of content:

It will also remember what your last setting was.

More obvious comment interactions

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that some slight differences with the commenting UI in that first screenshot. That's right, we've made the comment interactions themselves much more obvious!

It used to be that a comment looked like this:

It wasn't very obvious that there actually were any ways for you to interact with it, was it? In fact, these options only appeared if you moved your mouse over the comment:

Not the most obvious, nor the most elegant solution. So now, we've changed it so that comment interactions are always visible as seen above in that first screenshot.

We've also simplified these interactions further by removing a couple that are redundant:

• The Quote option was removed from commenting because, given the brevity of comments and the existence of comment threading, it was no longer necessary
• Because the amount of effort to flag a comment for moderation and to simply perform the moderating action is identical, moderators and staff members will no longer see the Flag option

Sort by Upvotes isn't working. I just tried it on a few news articles. It also doesn't remember the setting.

where my down votes at?

Can confirm, sort by upvotes doesn't work. It says it's sorting by upvotes but it's actually sorting from latest.

Good on Gamespot for actually implementing this feature. Been waiting for comment voting to come back ever since the comment system changed and was worried it would never return. Downvotes would be a great addition as well.

I don't see downvotes coming back any time soon. They were abused previously, simply to downvote a user rather than what they'd said.

Just having upvotes avoids that completely, and the poor comments will naturally not be upvoted.

It would be nice if the we got a notification when someone upvotes our comment, in addition to displaying the correct upvote tally.

Sorting by upvote is now fixed, as is the upvote count being off!

As for downvotes, I've commented on this before, but we have no intention of adding this feature in.

Down the line, we may add in a notification option for upvotes though. Thanks for the idea!

@dab198: @saturatedbutter: @LarkAnderson: Please don't bring back downvotes, cause they were being misused and abusive at that when a hardcore Sony/MS/PC fanboy doesn't agree with the comment and downvotes are worst at that so please don't bring it back.

Also while the upvotes is a nice return but my question is, will the mini avatars make a return when someone upvotes your comment like in the old comment system? I like that so I can see who voted my comment with that small avatar beside it.

@LarkAnderson: Whenever I go to a page all comments are now sorted by Upvote instead of Latest Post, in addition to the upvote tally being wrong on half of the comments. Don't you guys test these things before you put them live?

@suicidesn0wman: The setting remembers what you last used, so if you've previously set it to sort by upvotes, it will remember that on subsequent visits.

As for the numbers being off, if this ever happens it should only be temporary--we update upvote counts at a set frequency, and we're looking into ways to better optimize this.

@LarkAnderson: Sadly this is not how it works. I know it is what you guys wanted it to do, but want and will are completely different.

So I go here... http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bungie-admits-destiny-nightfall-rewards-are-so-bad/1100-6431417/

scroll down to the comment section, and this is what I initially see...

I double check to make sure it is set to Latest, which has the checkmark next to it. Then I switch to First, then back to Latest, and this is the result...

This is how it is working for me on every article posted since the last update. I also never changed this setting to anything else prior to today, it was always set to latest.

@LarkAnderson: Also, if it helps any, I'm on a Mac using Chrome Version 45.0.2454.101 (64-bit), current window res 1800x900.

@suicidesn0wman: Thanks for the details--we're looking into this now.

Weird! For me it's always sorting by first-to-last even though I have it set to Latest. It properly sorts it if I press the Refresh button for comments, but I have to press that every time I go to a page.

@LarkAnderson: I can confirm @suicidesn0wman's issue. I have to reset Latest (even though it's already set) just to see the latest comments.

I appreciate the effort being put into the new system, 'cause I know it's tough. I have high hopes for when it's finally working properly.

@elheber: I am wondering if this feature worked at first, but the settings in the back end get changed when I click the 'See the whole thread' links that end up in my email. Since those would alter the post order, maybe its changing our settings...

Also, my preferences aren't saving. I set it to Upvotes but any new article I open is always set to Latest.

Am I the only one still experiencing problems with this? Comments keep loading first-to-last on both Chrome and Firefox no matter what I set it to, and clearing my cache and cookies doesn't fix it.

As far as I can tell it always orders first-to-last on page load, but corrects to whichever sort method is selected whenever the module is refreshed, either by changing the order method or just clicking the refresh button on the comments module, I'm pretty sure just about everyone is affected by it, whether they've noticed or not, judging by where comment activity is focussed on news articles.

Unfortunately, it's the weekend now, so it's unlikely to be fixed prior to Monday at this point. It's a known issue though, at least, being essentially the same issue that suicidesn0wman detailed above.

Seems fixed now. Comments are sorting by latest.

Ditto, @saturatedbutter. It looks like pages load latest first by default. I also just checked, and yes indeed, the site remembers your sort-by preference now too.

GS, I'm keeping a close eye on you. It's all cool for now, but the moment something breaks on me I'm running back here screaming "fire!"