The ’net has been blogging for about 10 years and comments have been around ever since Open Diary added the feature to their system in 1998. Sometimes I wonder if the commenting system has outlived its usefulness.

Comments seem to have stopped adding value to the conversation. Instead, a comments section, especially one that is particularly busy, starts looking less and less like a civilized discourse and more and more like an Internet version of The Stanford Prison Experiment (meaning people start behaving in contradiction to how they behave normally).

Certainly, Digg’s commenting system (which allows registered users to hide useless and trollish comments) deserves some praise for attempting to cut down on the drivel, but even then I’m still not convinced that the good comments are adding any value.

I’ve taken a sampling of some Digg articles that I came across today as well as the first 5 comments (that aren’t marked down/hidden). I’ll let you take a look (remember if the comments don’t seem to make sense it’s probably because it’s a response to a hidden comment that has been marked down). It makes me wonder how useful a good comment is if it’s in response to a hidden bad comment…

Which Vista Edition is Right for You?

• I bet all you fanbois just love the chance to say “My Favoirte OS! ROFLZ” Seriously kids, chill out with the wastes of space.

• gah, I was afraid to go to this post, because this is something i am interested in, the various version of windows, but I knew I would find 4 answers:
  “linux”
  “mac”
  “nothing”
  “steal it”

seriously how about some good, real discussion on the topic

• Windows XP with Vista Transformation Pack of course. I used Vista Ultimate for a week and then deleted it. The system/kernel stuff uses too much ram & cpu, the "GPU Accelerated UI uses too much CPU, the save as dialog sucks, the new explorer blows when you’re using long paths, you can’t run OpenGL apps with Aero on as it counts as a DX app. Arghhh! Vista sucks, i’ll get it again in a years time when the bugs are ironed out.

• I find that more than two version of a commercial operating system (home and pro, generally) to be somewhat confusing to the end user.

  I’m not sure how this increases the value of the product – I mean, it seems to just clutter the decision for large license holder to upgrade and worse, breaks the continuity Windows users often have between work and home (eg. "hey, this worked on my Dell laptop… where’s $FEATURE_X program on my workstation?).

  Haven’t used the OS, assume its decent or better, but five versions (six counting the Starter) aimed at users? Weird.

• Whatever working versions are up on PirateBay.org :)

6 ways to make php scripts lighting fast!

• Yeah, then I can have the mighty Java Runtime Environment start up and eat 50megs of my memory to speed up your 1mb program by 5%.

  Here comes the java mod control in 3… 2… 1…

• Absolutely. Java is inherently faster than PHP at serving web pages.

  Oh wait, no it’s not. In fact, the raw speed difference between PHP and Java is meaningless considering code execution is almost never the bottleneck for a web site. Nine times out of ten the database is the bottleneck and you can use either PHP or Java to cache results, pool connections, etc (that is, when your table is already properly indexed).

  The meaningful differences between PHP and Java are development time, scalability, execution environment, libraries, and deployment management. Sometimes PHP is better and sometimes Java is better, depending on your needs.

  FWIW, the slowest web site I’ve ever seen (pre-caching) was Java-based and the second slowest (pre-caching) was PHP based. After caching content both were lightning-quick

• blog spam, but i guess ok with all the links

• gharding:
  
  It was a joke… I just like poking fun at the java fundamentalists from time to time ;)

  I should’ve wrote.. or you could use javascript to document.write every line – woulda made the joke more apparent.

  My apologies if it seemed like I was endorsing cold fusion in any manner ;)

• I had hoped.. but at least my joke WOULD have improved performance ;)

  (I bash all languages.. I work with about a dozen of them daily)

Out of those comments how many added value to the original conversation? Ok, maybe I’m being unfair to Digg. It’s massive in size; perhaps it doesn’t have the best sampling of users to generate insightful comments (see the South Park 1/4th rule).

Let’s take a look at a random blog that I stumbled upon recently.

How My File System Is Organized

• Wow that’s neat. I recently changed over to the Amora icons with are crazy and wacky but this post has persuaded me to go back over to my Aqua Neue icons. All done through CandyBar of course

• Interesting file structure you have, Glenn. I’ll try and get mine organised and show it you all tomorrow.

  The basics are a lot like yours.

• Josh, it’s a great icon set isn’t it? I love it.

  Smaran, thanks. Good luck on getting it all sorted

• @Josh: CandyBar’s great. I recently zapped it because I didn’t want to spend money buying it. It seems like an unnecessary expense.

  Hey Glenn, how about creating a set of forums where we can discuss all this kind of stuff? I think we’ve got us a little community here. It’s great that we’re all commenting so much but don’t you think the threads are getting a bit too long? And the posts a bit too general? I mean, maybe we can move ’the social (LOL!) to another place and keep your blog more clean and qualitative, somehow.

• I will seriously take that into consideration Smaran. Give it some weeks and you’ll probably see that feature implemented.

Well, that’s certainly more useful than Digg was. So it might be safe to say that smaller, less diluted blogs generate better comments. Even so, a smaller blog site might not be immune to useless comments.

I know of several bloggers that have temporarily or permanently disabled comments on their articles. Two come to mind immediately: Andy Rutledge (which incidentally has a similar write-up on social networking) and Patrick Haney.

Certainly my “research” can be viewed as anectdotal and more intensive research can be done to reach a more scientific conclusion about commenting systems and their validity.

I think it would be interesting to see an experiment where you took several blog authors and asked them to write some articles and then took a random sampling of people and asked them to reply anonymously to the article using a standard current commenting system. Then take the same people, strip them of their anonymity (place them in the same room with all the other people and the blog author) and ask them to comment on the piece.

So perhaps it’s time that we take a step back and look at the beast that we’ve created and ask ourselves, “Can we build a better commenting system?”

You know the commercial where the dad calls Dell about getting his daughter a PC and then whirls around town in his Barcalounger while in his pajamas? As I found out, that’s pretty much bullshit. If only things were that simple with Dell.

My trip down Dell Hell Lane started out with a trip to their website to buy a flat-screen monitor for my folks. I pictured myself taking my own little trip around town in my PJs with a smug look on my face as I whizzed by unhappy Christmas shoppers.

Unfortunately what actually transpired was nothing like that. If I were to sum up my experience, it could have been something like this: Barcalounger takes off, after going on and endless number of dead end streets, I get deposited on some train tracks and then I get run over by train. Let me explain.

I went to Dell’s website, added the monitor to my shopping cart and clicked the button to purchase what was in my cart. I get prompted with a pop-up window (usability warning 1) that wants me sign in {{sigh}} (usability warning 2).

This is to be expected, but seriously? How many passwords and accounts are consumers going to have in the world, one for every store? I wish every retailer that does business on the web would take a page out of American Eagle’s book. Their system allows you to buy stuff from them without being nagged about creating an account.

I go through the garbage motions of making an account to buy one monitor and then go through the entire process again (usability warning 3); go to main page, navigate to monitor page, add to cart, sign in, proceed to check out. Here is where the Barcalounger takes the first of many dead end turns.

The next page that I’m presented with reads “You have no items in your cart.” WTF? I just added it to my stinking cart. Repeat process. Same result. I think for a second that perhaps Dell’s website doesn’t like Apple’s Safari browser, so I crack open Firefox and give it a try. Same thing. Is this for real?

I imagine that most of Dell’s sales come from their website and for it to be failing in a consistent manner means hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars in lost sales. I imagine people getting fired left and right for this and look to see if there is some other way that I can order the monitor.

As if my prayers were answered (I didn’t really pray, unless you consider the stream of curses that came out of my mouth a prayer to some dark god) I saw the following text: Need Help? Chat with a Product Advisor from 7am to 10pm. I looked at the clock, 9:30 PM. Hrrrmmmm, perhaps my Barcalounger and I were going to get off “Dear God Help Me Street” and get to “Why Worry Lane” after all.

Nope. I clicked on the link and another popup window (usability warning 4) came up that reads “Get live answers from a Dell Product Advisor.” Underneath that there is a drop down box with some answers but no submit button or anything. I look beyond the dropdown box and I see this:

“Thank you for your interest in Dell Chat. All product advisors are currently assisting other customers and have become temporarily unavailable. Please close this window and check back in a few minutes to see if an Advisor has become available. Product advisors are available from 7am to 10pm…blah blah blah.”

Are you frackin’ kidding me? Let’s see how many usability warnings/atrocities they’ve managed to rack up here.

• If all of the people are busy and I’m in between the available times then put me in a queue like thousands of other customers that are using IM to connect with their customers. DO NOT tell me to check back. I won’t and most people won’t either.

• If I’m outside the available times, then DON’T SHOW THE LINK AT ALL.

• 7am to 10pm. PST, MST, CST, EST, UTC, R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me. What time zone are we talking about, geniuses?

3 warnings. Not bad. We’re up to 6.

So I pick up the phone. Dial the number and somehow I don’t get a nice lady like in the commercial. I get one of those stupid machines that makes you talk to it (usability warning numero 7). Please stop making us embarrass ourselves by talking to a recording.

Going through the automated menu system, I finally think that I’m making progress. Unfortunately, I’m wrong yet again. My poor Barcalounger and I are deposited on the train tracks with a train barreling towards me.

After I hear a couple of rings, I get a recording that basically says that Dell Sales are closed from starting at 10PM CST (Central Standard Time not Carlos Slacking Time). WTF!?, Dell actually closes and at 9 PM PST during holiday season to boot?! Why make me talk to a machine if no one is going to answer later? Just tell me up front; “Dell Sales is closed at this time.” I should mention that this is the only way that I figured out that the times on their website actually mean Central Time. If I had not made that call, I might not have ever figured it out. Let’s double-ding them for that. That’s a terrible rookie mistake for a big operation like Dell.

That makes 9 usability warnings.

Nine is way too many times to be disappointing your customers. Most customers would have given up by number 4. If there is a company that desperately needs to read Steve Krugs’ Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability it’s definitely Dell.

Oh well, maybe I’ll just get ’em a Mac instead. At least they are open 24 hours.