A New Feature - Updated

Written By: Timothy Fish Published: 6/12/2006

I’ve decided to try something new. I haven’t decided if I want to put it on a production website just yet, but this website serves as a test bed while it also provides information for the people who happen to drop by looking for something. The new feature that I have decided to try is a comment section. You will notice at the bottom of this article that there is a link. This link will allow you are anyone else to make comments related to this article.

A comment feature is not something that is new in itself. A lot of retailers have a feature that allows their customers to write a review of their merchandise. Blogs often allow readers to make comments on the ranting of the writer. What makes this different is that this particular site sits on the far edge of cyberspace and while there are a few people, such as you, who happen to find it, it is relatively unknown. Allowing the users of a site to provide feedback and even interact with each other is a proven way to increase the content of the site and to encourage users to return, but it is not clear that this holds true for a small site that does not serve a lot of people or is not intended to allow the owner to communicate with one’s friends, as is the case with Blogs.

For now I intend to leave these comment sections as an open forum that I will occasionally patrol for inappropriate comments. If things get out of hand then I may implement steps to encourage people to play nice or I may remove the functionality. My expectation is that it will be mostly ignored, still it may prove interesting to prove my hypothesis.

I have decided that this is not a good idea. Some jerk attempted to use my site to advertise some things that no one has any business buying. It pushed my hit counts up because of that, but over six thousand useless messages was more than I could tollerate.