Notes on our new comment system

[news]

  Thanks to all of you for providing your feedback and voicing your concerns about LiveJournal's new comment system. Please understand that we are taking your feedback seriously, and will continue to evaluate this new feature. In the meantime, we'd like to explain the reasons behind the change and the greater impact this has for LiveJournal.

First

Comments

[okay]

first off
pokemon

also, your copy/pasting is showing, LJ...

[okay]

"In the past, code was being piled upon old code, which turned out to be messy and unstable."

but it worked for everyone......

"which is meant to improve performance and user experience."

But it hasn't whatsoever

-Pages no longer need to refresh after adding comments, which helps reduce load times
Except it still does. Not only that, but I still have the problem of being redirected to the first page every time. I've sent support numerous messages about it and I still haven't heard back. Not even a "thank you we redirected your shit somewhere else"

-There's a new, more visual icon selection tool
That doesn't work for most of your userbase

Seriously, everyone was quite happy with your old form. Yeah, messy, but like I said it worked for everybody. Also, subject titles. Why won't you bring them back?

[othellia]

"In the past, code was being piled upon old code, which turned out to be messy and unstable."

but it worked for everyone......

Well, I work as a web programmer/designer so I can understand the need for complete code rehauls. Old developers sometimes don't leave comments and people don't know how things exactly work you start adding stuff to fix old problems and more stuff to fix the stuff that fixed the old problems but caused something else to break. And then someone creates a plugin that does a function in one line that used to take up a whole page... so yeah.

Though that's still no reason to completely redo the features. It's perfectly doable to mimic an old model with new code. Easier even probably, given new releases/technology.

So essentially, it is a valid excuse, but not for the subject they're trying to defend.

[okay]

Yeah I figured as much. I mean, yeah valid excuse but I think they came up with that to defend why this style "is better!!" when the majority disagrees. Kind of like a guilt trip.

[aristobrit]

I was going to say, my brother is a programmer and what LJ's message is really saying is that the programmers hated working with the old code so they threw it out and wrote code they liked and what users want was completely ignored. I think that's what it boils down to.

If they were implementing changes and writing new code anyway, they could have wrote new Comments coding but they simply don't care what users want. If they did they never would have gotten rid of the Comments line or made the changes they did.

[slayedaking]

To be fair, I think "programmers hated working with the old code" is a perfectly valid reason to rewrite it. But as has been said, there's absolutely no reason the new code shouldn't mimic the old style.

[hoodoo]

"It's perfectly doable to mimic an old model with new code."
exactly!

i get that once the coding is in place its not easy to revamp it but...why didnt they just do is from the get-go?

[okay]

Well, generally speaking since statistics are showing that a huge majority are having issues just trying to get anything to work. My friend has to refresh literally 22 times on average just to see LJ. Though if we're talking about painful, I've had friends, including myself, get migraines by just looking at this design. I'm forced to use style=mine for every page now. These are the issues that a lot of us have, including the lack of pewview and subject lines which are vital to many journals and communities such as aid and fundraiser communities. It should be an option to view this style by default, not forced upon us, especially so if the code is easy to write up from scratch as other web developers claim seeing how they already have it.

And though it was painfully out of date, it was still user friendly. Not all of us have super high speed net and Windows 7 or the newest Mac OS. This style is also impossible to use on anything other than a computer. Not mobile capable, not tablet friendly.. See why we're mad?

[okay]

Then sorry for generalizing?

.... and now I can't even edit properly. Good job, LJ.

[sappy_vcv]

It's always been that way for editing a comment; once it's been replied to, it's basically "frozen" from that moment on.

[life_inshadow]

Which is exactly as it should be. On forums where editing lasts forever, you get ninnies who incite people into arguments then edit their original inflammatory language to something more innocent. I like that editing here turns off once somebody answers you, even if it sometimes means embarrassing typos are immortalized.

... sorry, tangent.

[whatifoundthere]

Apropos of nothing, yay Louis Wain icon!

[lafinjack]

They're using hyperbole for effect. You're being excessively literal over a niggling point.