Sometimes I go back to an old story on k5, just to review what the overall response was. Occasionally I then discover a totally inane comment rated 5 out of 1, riding above all the well-thought out posts which inevitably achieve 4.x out of some large number of ratings. Now that doesn't really matter, for several reasons:
- These stories aren't active any more.
- Anybody looking at the story will easily judge the context - and is likely to rate it down anyway.
However, if each story had a Best Comments box there would be an incentive (from the point of view of your typical lamer troll) to post far more of these inane comments and then rate them up with another account. 2 minutes work and they're listed in this hall of fame. This would be especially tempting if the Best Comments box appeared not just at the head of a story but also beside the story heading in the Section listings and in other logical places.
If this idea were implemented, I think it should take account of the total number of ratings a comment attracts as well as the average value. That seems the only way to prevent such abuse. The formula for that would be tricky, however, which is one reason why I would rather not see this idea implemented. Simple rules good, complex rules bad.
At least, I wouldn't like to see it on k5. In a public weblog, where trolling is a certainty, features like this are too vulnerable to abuse to be worthwhile. But I suppose it could be a valuable option for an internal weblog, especially one where the eventual consensus generated from a story would be used for internal decision-making or planning.
So, for that reason, maybe the Best Comments suggestion could be an optional feature of Scoop.
