After several weeks of work and more weeks of design, we have a new commenting system that is a quantum improvement over the old system. It's faster and easier to create a comment.
You can easily add images and videos and rate the article and in a day or two, you'll also be able to recommend each comment too.
As in the past, each user's image from his or her profile will be displayed, and you can mouse over the member name below the image for a view of a partial bio. Members can still select the text and background color for their comment (this can be saved as a preference in the member profile so it doesn't have to be selected each time.)
And then... we have a new system for dealing with flags. Our editors are going to love this. NO MORE FLAG NOTIFICATION EMAILS!! That's right. The old system was built when we only had a few editors and would send a notification to the handful of editors we had. Now, with over 40, it doesn't make sense to send an email blast. Instead. editors see a notification in the article submission queue that there are flags waiting to be moderated. And if an editor posts a flag, it's really easy to finish it up. Just click on the new button, FLAGS MANAGER (only visible to editors) and it will take you to the new FLAGS Control Panel.
Un-resolved flags will be in red. Mouse over the flagger name and you'll see his or her bio, Mouse over the name of the flagged commenter and you'll see his bio. Mouse over the title of the comment and you'll see the comment. Mouse over the title of the article on which the comment is flagged and you see the description of the article. Then, the right hand column has a button you push for a selection of actions you can take for the comment:
confirm
unconfirm
Hide
unflag
unflag but hide
show
If you want to re-flag the comment, click on the REFLAG link immediatelyb below the drop down menu and you get a dialogue box that allows you to add a comment to be displayed where the comment is either shown or hidden.
When the editor is finished doing the flag work, there's a BACK button that takes him or her back to the place in the comments section where he left off.
The new system should make it much faster and easier to post a comment, which I expect will lead to more commenting. It should also increase the frequency of ratings of articles. The comment recommending system will give members kudos for good commenting and soon, we'll be tracking them an maybe even ranking commenters.
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