Lack of basic features/completely impractical comment fields
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It is utterly ridiculous that this is such a hugely-successful service and yet we can’t enable any of these basic things that had been available on Internet forums a decade ago:
1. Editing comments
2. Deleting comments
3. Previewing commentsThe comment field is a complete joke. It’s just a blank space with absolutely NO FUNCTIONS OR TIPS. The only two things one can do is enable e-mail notifications and hit the ‘reply’ button.
One can’t even know how to format posts, because there are no guidelines for that. Sure, they can make a new account and blog and find them there, but that’s a hassle, simply because you were too lazy to put them in the right place — where people are making posts.
As a result, I was creating hyperlinks several sentences in length, and they were ‘eating up’ important signs and making the whole hyperlink be in italics; all because I couldn’t preview my comments to see that this was to be the case. Nor could I have known that I was doing any of this.I am, frankly, appalled and disgusted by the simplicity and ignorance of the programmers or whoever responsible for overlooking these things; and I hope this is the actual reason, and that it’s not intentional. I don’t see why it would be, but who knows.
I request that all three of these functions are added, as well as instructions for formatting: make sure they are found besides the comment field. I mean, just make the comment field the same as the one for blog posts; how hard can that be?
Start treating blog-readers with the due diligence and make sure they are comfortable with the features, because it is them who are the traffic that makes you almost the entirety of your profits in the first place; and please do it asap. Otherwise, I’m not going to be recommending your services to anyone, nor making any blogs on here.
I hope someone can get this message through to someone responsible.
Please take care,
Respectfully,
Welgswoj.The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Same goes for the contact form and this forum: no editing, no preview, no delete functions, no formatting (except after I’ve posted; but I can’t edit my post to add it, lol).
Incredibly shoddy service for a website that’s supposedly “27% of the Internet”. -
Nobody cares?
What a joke. This whole thing is at rock bottom. The only thing that’s good is that the servers don’t go down. -
The new site linked to your name doesn’t have any content let alone any comments to edit. Have you looked at the wp-admin dashboard? You can edit your own and other people’s comments on your site easily there when you have some. http://grainofveles.wordpress.com/wp-admin
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basic things that had been available on Internet forums a decade ago:
1. Editing comments
2. Deleting comments
3. Previewing commentsIn 5 days time I will have been here for 11 years. I answer many support questions. Once, a very long time ago, we were able to edit and delete comments in support forum threads like these. That lead to flaming and quarreling and other obnoxious trollish behaviors. Staff removed those functions from these support forums and I cheered ALLELUIA! when they did so.
If you have a site that is hosted by wordpress.COM like the empty one you complain about creating and you feel you need special help as the forum construct is taxing your patience and is not up to your standards you can get support directly from Staff.
re: Getting WordPress.com Support
If you wish to contact Staff on any matter rather than posting details into a support thread like this one, and tagging a support thread with modlook in the sidebar please read on.
How do I get a Moderator/Staff reply for my question? https://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-help-in-the-forums/#how-do-i-get-a-moderatorstaff-reply-for-my-question
All support docs are at https://en.support.wordpress.com/, and that link is found on every page in this site, and on the bottom of every Admin page on every blog hosted here, and and at the bottom of every support forum thread and page.
Go to https://en.support.wordpress.com/ and type in Getting WordPress.com Support into the search box and click https://en.support.wordpress.com/?s=Getting+WordPress.com+Support+
Results: Getting WordPress.com Support https://en.support.wordpress.com/help-support-options/
There is no phone support. Those who have a paid upgrade for a wordpress.COM site can use the “Contact Support” form, http://support.wordpress.com/contact/
The best WordPress.COM contact form to use now for Staff assistance is:
http://wordpress.com/help/contactLive chat will be available there only if we have Happiness Engineers available to chat. When they are not available using that link results in posting to this peer support forum. https://en.support.wordpress.com/live-chat/
re: direct email support
Also note, that you can email WordPress.COM Staff at:
help@wordpress.comHowever, if you are referring to a site that is not hosted by wordpress.COM your are posting to the wrong support forum. That support is at http://wordpress.ORG/support/
WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG are completely separate and have different username accounts, logins, features, run different versions of some themes with the same names, and have separate support documentation and separate support forums. Read the differences here http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
This is wordpress.COM support. We provide support only for wordpress.COM hosted sites. Our support docs do not apply to
(1) local installs of wordpress.ORG software on your own server or
(2) wordpress.ORG software installs on paid hosting, and we do not provide support for them at wordpress.COM.
(3) sites linked to wordpress.COM accounts with the Jetpack plugin so they display on the My Sites wordpress.com account page. -
@welgswoj if you’re running your own installation of WordPress.org, there are ways to allow your readers to edit their own comments, and individual site owners can decide for themselves if that’s getting out of control.
We don’t do that here because of the issues Timetheif mentioned. Everyone has full control over what appears on their own site, though, so if you’re concerned about fixing a comment you’ve left somewhere, you might ask the site owner if they’ll fix it.
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I’m sorry, but you did not understand my post. Try reading it again.
I made a blog that is empty, because it required me to do so in order to be able to post on these forums. I am not gonna post anything on that new blog until the WordPress staffs adds the basic features which I’d described in the original post of this topic. Otherwise I’m not gonna to use its services to run a blog of my own.
This affects ALL USERS of wordpress.com. You can go to whichever blog and you will not be able to preview or edit your posts, nor find information on how to format them in the section/window where you input text — unlike on most forums on the Internet.
The same issue applies to this forum, except that there is at least some basic formatting for replies (but not for original posts).@timethief
Apparently, in your 11 years of blogging experience you haven’t figured out that writing something more advanced than extremely simple comments requires proper formatting like making certain parts of the text appear bold, italic etc. It also should be obvious (yet apparently, inconceivably, it is not to your mind, or maybe you just didn’t understand me) how the preview and edit functions are necessary to someone who cares about quality and specificity in comments. Any person participating in some scientific sort of discourse will regard these things as must-haves.I don’t have a clue what you’re on about with your weird remarks about trolls. This has nothing to do with what I’ve stated in my original post, and it was neither “rude” or “obnoxious”. I’m just understandably irritated that people haven’t figured these things out in 11 or so years.
The suggestion that I should contact support staff directly are to my mind, unfounded. From what I’ve read (on some of the pages in the links you included — before you posted them, I may add), it requires me to buy a plan to do so. That is a notion from my perspective, though I understand why that is so in terms of logistics from the point of view of the WordPress team.
I could not find the support e-mail address you provided anywhere on the site. I will try sending an e-mail to that address, though I am not sure to what effect — still, thank you.What I am suggesting, if implemented, as it should be — which should only take a single day of programming AT MOST; even to an amateur — will vastly improve the experience for a whole bunch of bloggers. I will have a reason to consider paying for WordPress that aren’t free then — but only then.
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Sorry, but this is far from “full control”:
“Can I edit comments I left on someone else’s blog?
No. It is not possible to edit or delete any comments you have left on other WordPress.com blogs. Blog owners are in full control of the comments on their blogs, so you can try contacting the blog owner and ask them to edit or delete a comment for you. If the blog owner has not posted any contact information, you can try leaving a short comment asking how to contact them directly.”
Frankly, I don’t understand why that is. Because of lack of this possibility, as well as the lack of formatting guidelines and the preview function, your blogs are ridiculously, hugely enfeebled, when they would otherwise be proper mediums for Internet discussions of all kinds. Right now, they are irritating even for casual conversations for someone who tries to word what they want to say accurately.
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Honestly, I can’t figure it out. Why do I need to contact the site owner to edit my comment instead of doing it myself? Every other site with comment sections/forms I can think of out there doesn’t do it like that; it just gives the control to the user.
Imagine if you’re the owner of a hugely popular blog and several people contact you every minute telling you what to edit in their comments… now keep in mind that most of these errors could be avoided if there was a preview function in the first place.
I mean, do I really have to go on describing all the aspects of this? Are you really not convinced yet? -
I am not requesting that you give “full control” to the users, I am requesting that you give COMMENT CONTROL and FORMATTING CONTROL/GUIDELINES to the users, and the PREVIEW FUNCTION.
I am not trying to be rude, but where is your reading comprehension? -
You said: “there are ways to allow your readers to edit their own comments”, but this is not true judging from what I cited, and from what you say immediately afterwards.
By the way, if trolls editing their comments is a concern (which I can understand), then you should implement a function where you can look at previous versions of the post. Such a thing exists for Facebook comments. You could make it so that only moderators could look up previous versions of the post. Otherwise, a few trolls are making things harder for everyone else and you’ve basically succumbed to the threat instead of solving it.
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While we appreciate and have noted the feedback, our community support forums are not intended for policy debates, so I am closing this thread.
On our servers, by design, we give site owners (not visitors) the final say on what appears on their own site.
If you find yourself wanting to leave editable comments, consider responding via pingback instead: write your response as a new post on your own site, and include a link to the original post. You can modify your post as needed.
While the site owner is under no obligation to approve your pingback, our default configuration is designed to automatically put your link in the original post’s comment section.
- The topic ‘Lack of basic features/completely impractical comment fields’ is closed to new replies.
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