Revamped Comment Buttons + New Ways To Buy Techdirt Credits

Techdirt

from the fixing-things-up dept

If you haven’t noticed, we tend to do things a bit differently around here sometimes. While other sites are looking at ways to ban you from reading their site if you use an ad blocker, we’ve made it easy for people to block ads on Techdirt if they feel that the ads are a problem. And while more and more sites are turning off comments, we’ve always believed that the comments on Techdirt are integral to the site and a huge part of the experience here. Over the years, we’ve added a few things here and there to keep the comment section vibrant — including the “insightful” and “funny” buttons, which let you vote and help to highlight the most insightful and funniest comments (and we highlight the best ones every week in a separate post).

A few years back, we also added what we call “credits” — which can be used to tag any particular comment as the “first word” or “last word.” This would help to really highlight a particular comment by reposting it on top of the comments or beneath the comments, with a highlighted background and presentation, designating it as a comment you really wanted people to see. This feature was mostly only available to our supporters who bought various blog perk subscriptions, such as the Techdirt Crystal Ball (which also lets you read some of our stories before they’re available to the wider public), the Techdirt Watercooler (which lets you join our insider chat) or the full Behind the Curtain package that lets you really see a bunch of posts in progress, as well as join the insider chat.

As you may have seen (since we turned it on last night), we’ve revamped the comment buttons a bit, in particular, opening up the “first word/last word” system. Here are the key changes:

• You can now just buy Techdirt Credits directly in the store, rather than getting them with a package or other purchase. There are bulk discounts as well, so buy a bundle of them. So this is a great way to both get a cool feature for yourself that helps promote good comments — and to support Techdirt at the same time.
• You can now take credit for giving someone a “first word” or “last word.” In the past, no one (not even me) knew who was giving comments “first word” or “last word” honors. Now, there’s an option every time you promote someone’s comments to first word or last word status, you can let the world know you did it by checking the box that says “put my name in lights, too!” This is optional, but something we felt was worthwhile. If you’re promoting someone’s comment, take a bow yourself as well.
• The buttons have been revamped. The old “word” voting buttons were getting a bit stale, so the look has been totally refreshed.
• The “first word/last word” buttons are now in the voting bar with the others. Even though these aren’t “votes” in the same sense, it made sense to put them all in the same place.

So, go ahead and check it out. Buy some credits, promote some comments, take a bow, and enjoy the comments section….

We’re still working on some more features as well (for the comments and for, well, basically the rest of the site). So stay tuned…

Filed Under: comments, first word, last word