Comment sections are in chaos. It seems most nearly every publication site deals with harmful or irrelevant comments; as this continues to become more problematic, sites seem to go two. The first is to simply close the comments section, a method adopted even by large publications like Vice. The second is to commit human moderators to comb the comments section, turning comments into a “submission-acceptance” system. The New York Times is a good example of this.

It is an issue needs addressing, as comment sections offer a place for the reader’s voice, and allows a publication to foster its own community. Both solutions adopted today have potentially detrimental effects towards these two end goals. In Vice’s case, it’s pretty self explanatory: no comment section means no voice. As for The New York Times, strict moderation lends itself to an echo chamber of voices more often than not. Publications that adopt a system of strict comment control are in danger of censoring comments and moulding the community towards a specific bias.

The online comment section is not an unfamiliar place. As much as we like to make fun of YouTube and Facebook’s dysfunctional comment section, we still still yearn for a healthy place to share our voices. A functioning comment section can defuse the existing tension between journalists and readers, create a positive feedback cycle that encourages loyalty and worthy investments, and do what the internet does the best: build a community.

Examples

Many news websites (Buzzfeed, for example) use facebook’s comment plugin, taking very little care of what goes in to the comment section. Such attitude reflects these news websites’ relationship with their readers, one that is fragile, passive, and works on a single direction.

Facebook react emojis and Youtube comment section

In other cases, comment section exists only as a formal relic, and serve little to no purpose. Take, for example, sites that slap on Facebook plug-in comment sections. Traditional comment sections don’t contribute greatly to a news site’s revenue, but cost a lot of time, money, and effort to maintain properly. Workarounds like this address this issue, but ultimately don’t contribute much to a site’s content and quality. It simply slaps on a comment section at the end of articles.

Comments, if used correctly, can be a powerful asset. We want to be able to incorporate this into a site’s content as much as possible. Moving forward, we think the best way to do this is through direct interaction with the content.

Our product solution is a comment-managing system that publications can use. It allows readers to place comments in relation to specific points in the article. As readers progress through an article, they will see related approved comments at specific points. The comments will further act as threads, where commenters can expound upon, or hold a conversation about the comment’s subject matter.

Introducing:

Note is a commenting system that allows the reader to react directly to specific elements (from a single word to multiple paragraphs, to images) within an article, and read those comments live as the article progresses. Note encourages its reader to be positively engaged with the article, both as a reader, and an active co-editor.

The readers can see their uploaded comments on their devices immediately after submission; however, these comments will not be published until they have been accepted by the moderators. This feature creates a false live editing experience for the reader, while maintaining full control of the content.

Index page

To add a comment, simply select the part of the text that you want to comment on, that would lead you to the action panel. From there, you can choose to either highlight or comment on the selected text.

Reader can choose to highlight, or comment on the selected text

Highlighting, namely, would highlight the selected text, which can exist either locally or on the internet; the latter allows metadata to accumulate and present a crowd-sourced “most highlighted” section to future readers.

Tap to reveal the highlighted part. The top three most highlighted section would show up in the beginning of the article.

Commenting, would open the comment panel, where you can write text, embed image, links, and edit their previous comments. To publish your comment, simply in put your username(which would only exist within this article) and location, your comment would immediately appear on your reading devices. Keep in mind that it would take some time for your comment to be published and seen by other readers.

Comment Panel

To view comments linked to more than one line of text, tap on the line on the left side of the text. To change between targeted text, use the slider on the left.

Sliding verticlly to see multiple targeted texts

You can also leave a comment at the end of the article. After you have posted your comment, a pop-up window would show how many other readers have also contributed to this article, you are now one of them.

Thank you note