Horologium

July 03, 2003
Inline comments

Does anyone know of sites other than this one and Daily Pundit that use inline comments? From what I've seen, it's not difficult to configure MT for inline comments, but very few sites use them. Unless the site is one that gets dozens of comments per post (Eject! Eject! Eject! comes to mind immediately), inline comments are easier to navigate. One can read the comments without opening a fussy little comments window.

Most sites (especially the well-designed ones, like the ones from Sekimori), have inline comments for individual posts, but I am referring to posts on the blog's index page.

posted on July 03, 2003 08:14 PM

Comments:

Mike's got them in place at Cold Fury; ofttimes, the comments are longer than the post, but how bad can that be? :)

posted by CGHill on July 4, 2003 08:48 AM

They add to the size of the page and slow down loading time for people on dial-up. Those comments are really there (and loaded in the browser), they just are 'invisible' till you click. That's why a lot of us don't use them.

posted by Kathy K on July 4, 2003 03:50 PM

Ooops, sorry, thought you meant the instantly appearing ones... that really are inline, just invisible.

Same thing applies to true 'inline' comments, with the addition that a lot of people really don't want to wade through comments to get to the next post. (I tried them for a short while, when I first started, and got complaints -- and I didn't get lots of comments then.)

posted by Kathy K on July 4, 2003 03:54 PM

Hmmmm. I've never had any negative feedback on the inline posts. Of course, I've only had a few positive comments on the inline posts, and one of them was from Bill Quick, asking how they were working for me.

Since I normally get about four comments for every five posts, comments don't significantly slow down my site's load times, unless I have someone post a novel. I deleted an off-topic, 1440 word screed last year, because it did adversely affect load time for the site.

posted by Timekeeper on July 4, 2003 05:51 PM

I ended up compromising. I run them inline on my permalink page (which is a daily archive, not individual page) and leave them off the main page. Seems to work; since people who click from elsewhere to see a particular post usually are also interested in seeing what others said.

posted by Kathy K on July 5, 2003 12:00 PM