VTOR experiment: leave inline comments on any post
Just added a new experimental feature for readers to leave inline comments here at VTOReality.com using the third party service LineBuzz.com. Here’s how it works:
1. Visit any of the 575+ posts at VTOReality like this one.
2. After the page loads, the LineBuzz javascript code will load and you can highlight any text inside a post and leave a comment about the highlighted text. A small popup window will appear to type in your comment and the CAPTCHA code (to prevent bots and spamming):
3. Press submit and there will be a new underline under the selected text where the inline comments can be viewed.
4. The comment you leave will have a hyperlink to the post over on the LineBuzz website and invite other LineBuzzers (if that’s what you call them) to visit the site and engage in the conversation.
Possible uses and misuses [gasp]
This will allow conversations to occur on specific sentences or words inside the posts. Have a question about a specific sentence in a post? Just highlight the text and leave a comment. You will need a LineBuzz login ID which means you need to register before or after making you comment. That only takes 30 seconds but too bad it doesn’t use OpenID. Once registered you will be able to leave comments on any site using LineBuzz including VTOR.
One of my concerns with the service is that it could lead to keywords in posts being spammed. Although comments can be removed, we don’t need any more comment spam to moderate (already getting over 100 comment spams a day and growing). Also if too many words are underlined the posts could become messy to reader I’m generally not fond of hover over links that show ads but hover over reader interaction is worth exploring and testing.
I like the idea of readers and VTOR authors being able to draw attention to specific text and/or links in posts and leave direct feedback. I also like that by leaving a comment like this, it will promote the site on a third party service. Our group wants to do promotional things to bring new readers to VTOR.
Please remember, this is an experimental test feature and might not be a feature that our group votes to keep long term and thus this whole post could be invalidated in the future if/when the feature is removed. It will be voted on at our May 25 group meeting. Would call a vote this Friday but that’s only two days from now and doesn’t give us enough time to test the feature.
Readers, you definitely have a say too, what do you think? Do you like, dislike this feature?
May 16th, 2007 • 
TD Goodliffe • 
comment | May 16, 2007 at 07:41 | individual comment-link
This feature is DA GHEY. Why? You have to register. That’s plain stupid. Hell, the only other “comment” service I ever registered for was CoComment and at least that was useful in tracking multiple blog comments.
comment | May 16, 2007 at 07:44 | individual comment-link
Like I said above, I wish it let us use OpenID. I don’t mind registering for new things though. I do mind the comment made though that the comments aren’t stored or backed up on the site, they are stored at a third party site. This means they could go poof! There should be an option to integrate with the site via plugin.
comment | May 16, 2007 at 07:46 | individual comment-link
Neat service. The only thing that would concern me is that the inline comments are not stored in the sites database, but relies on the 3rd party. Some legit and solid comments can be left that could be left in the dust if lineBuzz is broke, or worse goes under.
pingback | May 16, 2007 at 09:40 | individual pingback-link
[...] to your website(s) LineBuzz.com – add inline comments to your blog. We started testing already [VTOReality.com] and early comments bring out a disappointment that the comments aren’t stored locally and [...]
comment | May 16, 2007 at 10:31 | individual comment-link
I’ll also point out that this has already been done before (inline comments via JS). I wrote about JS-kit a while ago. Same concept. No need to login.
comment | May 16, 2007 at 19:37 | individual comment-link
Hi guys,
I’ll take these one at a time, starting with the easy one:
We’re not the same as JS-Kit. JS-Kit provides traditional threaded comments below a blog entry. We are the first ever to provide inline blog comments that let you highlight text and comment on a particular part of a blog entry. Some people call it web annotation. There are over 30 companies providing some sort of web annotation, but every one requires you install a plugin. So if you have 30 visitors in a day and two of them have the plugin installed, the other 28 don’t know there’s any interaction on the website. LineBuzz works cross-browser and cross-OS. Just one line of Javascript installed on a single website instead of potentially thousands of browsers requiring a plugin or bookmarklet installation.
Now the harder questions:
Re: I don’t own my own comments. Yes we store the comments on our own database. They’re backed up and are on production class servers in a data center in Virginian with multiple redundant power sources and redundant OC12 backbone networks. But that still doesn’t answer your question. So we’re considering providing an export for blog authors that lets them grab a data dump of their comments any time they want in either XML or CSV format. Does that work for you? Any suggestions on how you’d like this implemented?
Re: OpenID: We’re looking at openid as an alternative to our own registration system. We launched on Monday, just over 48 hours ago, so we have a ton of feedback from our authors and are still absorbing it all. We’re not some big bad evil corporation and we also don’t have VC’s breathing down our necks (we’re self funded) telling us to squeeze profits out of our business and take advantage of our blog authors. So we just want to do what’s in the best interests for our authors and if OpenId works best, then that’s what we’ll do. Any info on advantages/disadvantages of OpenId and personal experiences would be very helpful.
Re user registration: We implemented user registration to protect our authors. We are going to be adding a user banning feature soon and registration enables that. Again, we want what’s best for you guys, so we’re considering giving authors the option to enable anonymous comments.
Hope that answers all your questions. Please give us as much feedback as you can so we can make LineBuzz better for you. Either email Kerry Boyte, our head of product design and QA at kerry at linebuzz.com or post a comment on our blog at http://blog.linebuzz.com/ either inline or traditional.
Thanks,
Mark Maunder
LineBuzz.com Founder & CEO.
http://linebuzz.com/mark/
comment | May 17, 2007 at 05:49 | individual comment-link
Mark – thanks for stopping by and providing more information, but your post ended on an odd note: “Either email Kerry Boyte, our head of product design and QA at kerry at linebuzz.com or post a comment on our blog at http://blog.linebuzz.com/ either inline or traditional.”
Is there some problem with keeping the conversation out in the open on our blog? Why should we send more data your direction — which we’ve all identified is the biggest problem with your service — when we can just have a conversation here where it started? You picked up on this post, so I’d imagine you folks will see the conversation continue here
XML or CSV format export not as useful as a server side plugin that does everything server side and sends a copy of the data to you. LineBuzz is the one that should be getting a copy of the data, not the site where the comment originated and was generated. If the comment is made from our site the data should reside at our site.
OpenID isn’t so much for authors, it’s for readers who will resist the idea of registering for a third party site to leave an inline comment. Why do you think sites like bugmenot are popular? Readers don’t like forced registration options. Anon comments is not the answer as that will just create more comment spam and as mentioned in my post above we don’t need to manage any more comment spam.
Your site can still get linklove by having a server side plugin. As JavaScript with third party hosting, it is dramatically less useful to sites like ours who are trying to get away from third party hosted anything. It’s a decent concept, but again, you folks should seriously consider a server side plugin option with the comments saved in a database and thus true integration with the site.
comment | May 17, 2007 at 05:53 | individual comment-link
Like I said before. like JS-KIT. Concept is EXACTLY the same. JS-KIT runs off external servers (like line buzz). It’s javascript code initiated (like line buzz). It does commenting (like line buzz).
All that was added is highlighting. That’s easy to do. The only difference here I see is the user registration system.
If I were to implement this on my own things, I’d want access to the comments without it being stored elsewhere. Otherwise, there’s pretty much no point in setting this up for my users since it’s a complete hassle for them. Comment registration should be voluntary, not forced. And I don’t mean anonymous comments either. It should be similar to say… TypeKey. voluntary.
The whole data center thing is PR talk. I’ll give for example the fact that QWEST and AT&T went down yesterday. Tier 1. Thus, if that database happened to be on that Tier 1, but the blog wasn’t, then there’s absolutely on control.
I’m all for new services, but I personally would not give up the control I have to keep user reading easy and friendly. I’d be doing my users a disservice if so.
My two cents.
comment | May 17, 2007 at 05:57 | individual comment-link
I agree with the registration thing. That was my first turn off on leaving a test comment. Having to sign up for another account just to leave a comment was a bit much. In so much as a page that takes more than 5 seconds to load.
comment | June 1, 2007 at 16:37 | individual comment-link
Our VTOR group has voted to remove Linebuzz, so it’s been removed from the site.
comment | April 14, 2008 at 05:40 | individual comment-link
This trip is new solution of SEO….congratz….handmade spam comments