At the beginning of this week we introduced a new comments
feature on Read/WriteWeb, called SezWho. Basically
it introduces comment rating, reputation and filtering to this blog. SezWho was created
by one of our occasional writers, Jitendra Gupta - whose team
installed it onto R/WW. You can check out the full list of features in the SezWho FAQ, but in this post I want to summarize
how it improves R/WW's community.
A good example of SezWho in action is on our post entitled Is Facebook Worth the Hype?, which was published yesterday and so far has 33 comments. In fact here is comment number 33, by Greg Smith:
You can see above that Greg's comment currently has a rating of 3.3 (out of 5). Also you can check out Greg's history of comments on Read/WriteWeb, and the rating each one got, by hovering your mouse over 'Profile':
Note that Greg's SezWho profile can be utilized over other sites too - i.e. his profile is not centered around R/WW, but around Greg himself. In other words, it is a distributed system that can be used across multiple sites.
The power of SezWho on a blog like ours is that any person can rate any comment. You do need to supply an email address, via a pop-up that should only appear once. I actually queried Jitendra about the need for an email address, as I wondered why SezWho doesn't allow people to anonymously rate comments. Jitendra replied that "anon ratings become really easy to game and one commenter can mess up the entire system by repeatedly rating their own comment". He said that "we are using the email address to identify the users", but ultimately it also "makes the system more robust and trustworthy, while providing users incentives to have a good reputation."
So how do you rate comments? At the bottom of each comment, you'll see this:
If you thought the comment contributed something to the post, click 'yes' - which increases the rating of that comment. This allows other readers to then filter the comments on a post, to only show the ones rated highly by other readers. This comes in handy when the post itself is quite long and there are a lot of comments - e.g. Josh's Facebook Hype post that Greg commented on. The filtering is done at the top of all the comments:
Jitendra told me that the key technology is SezWho's scoring algorithm, which mimics the way reputations are transacted in the real world. Says Jitendra:
"We weigh the ratings from highly rated users more highly than ratings from other users. We are also planning to support context sensitive reputations, such that a user reputation in one area (e.g. technology) does not automatically translate to a high reputation in another (e.g. politics)."
Jitendra said they have over 50K users with profiles currently. They are growing rapidly, via individual sites like Read/WriteWeb - but they are also "doing deals with big social media hosting companies". SezWho supports Wordpress and MovableType platforms at this point, but they are working on phpBB and vBulletin. Plus they will eventually make their APIs public.
I mentioned recently that improving community on Read/WriteWeb is my number 1 priority for the site; and SezWho has certainly given our comments some 'wisdom of the crowds' functionality. Rating, reputations, filters - these are all features we regularly see in the web products we report on and analyze at R/WW. So SezWho allows us to experiment with the same technologies in our own community. Plus of course, SezWho is a very 'read/write' technology - as it highlights the comments of our readers and hopefully encourages more community as a result.
There are more things coming on R/WW to enhance the community here, but for now please tell us what you think of SezWho.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Read/WriteWeb's New Comments Feature: SezWho.
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I was wondering when someone was going to come out with this, and if other have before, sorry I missed it. Read/Write Web has just installed a comment reputation/rating system called SezWho. What SezWho does is provides a means for each visitor to rat... Read More
Read/WriteWeb's New Comments Feature: SezWho: At the beginning of this week we introduced a new comments feature on Read/WriteWeb, called SezWho. Basically it introduces comment rating, reputation and filtering to this blog. This is truly cool. Folks w... Read More
Dere legger igjen kommentarer her på NRKbeta, og vi forsøker så godt vi kan å svare på dem. Det er en politikk vi har: Her skal vi svare på ting dere melder tilbake om. Og siden dette er NRKbeta, skal vi teste en god del ting som er - nettopp - ... Read More
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Comments
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Well it beats any other comment plugin that was developed so far.
One thing though, I believe this will be more useful in a forum type of setup rather than a blog. As a blog is more or less meant for casual discussion, even if the topics can get sensitive. So rating comments is something a lot of people may not be interested in, they do enough of that on digg.
So I don't see the benefit for it in a blog environment. But then again perhaps I'll think differently about it when I have 86,000 RSS readers and a traffic rank in the top 5,000 sites {per Alexa}.
Posted by: Ali | July 22, 2007 2:51 AMAli,
Good points...although we have noticed a lot of ratings in the blog environments as people like to participate just by voting . Voting in this sense tends to be a quick way to express if the users find the comment useful etc.. Thus voting enhances the community participation level.
Also SezWho is useful for small sites too as it links small sites with big sites and vice-versa based on commenters. This drives traffic to everybody (both small and big sites) by improving the quality of discussion via cross community context on users.
Check out my profile, and you will see links to some small sites there...These sites will get some additional traffic based on these links (and so will RWW via a back link from the small site).
Jitendra
Posted by: Jitendra | July 22, 2007 3:20 AMSezWho
Its great - the only issue I have found is that in Commentful, it lists twice as many comments as what there really is.
Here is an example
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1434/868638249_4e06d5bbb8_o.png
Commentful says the thread has 68 comments, when in reality it has 34.
Not sure whether this is an issue with Commentful or Sezwho.
Posted by: Samaritan | July 22, 2007 3:32 AMgreat, i like it.
Posted by: riku | July 22, 2007 7:08 AMJitendra -- what about support for Typepad?
Also, did you see Brad Feld's post from yesterday on this very topic?
"The Dark Matter of the Blogosphere"
http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2007/07/the_dark_matter.html
An excerpt: "Wouldn’t it be nice if the comments – one of the most pervasive examples of user-generated content on the web today – actually were organized in a broadly useful way? "
I told him about SezWho... :-)
cheers,
Posted by: Graeme Thickins | July 22, 2007 7:40 AMGraeme
Very interesting ... trying it right away ..... would be nice to have it in Spanish too thought .... :D
Posted by: hombrelobo | July 22, 2007 9:26 AMThe curmudgeon's view:
I'm just not certain that I won't fatigue after taking pause in enough conversations to rate someone else's comment rather than just replying them. An extra step. I applaud the benefits of comment authority, and see the value that it could provide to different spaces. Just don't know if I'll be motivated 3 months from now to continue participating. I imagine that it would become like digg, with a small number of high-impact participants controlling the fate of UGC.
All the best
Tom
Posted by: Tom O'Leary | July 22, 2007 10:00 AMGraeme,
Thanks for the recommendation...
Since TypePad is hosted, we need to talk with Six Apart...We are indeed looking to work with them to get this done.
Hombrelobo,
We will have a spanish version as soon as we get a little bit more demand :-)
Samaritan,
We will look at the commentful issue...
Thanks,
Posted by: jitendra | July 22, 2007 10:00 AMJitendra
Tom,
Good question...
Are you familiar with 90-9-1 rule - typically only 10% of the people ever participate in a community and 1% are active participants ...
Now there are a number of reasons for this lack of participation. We think the main ones are that participants have no incentive to participate, it take too much time to articulate something good, and people might have already said what another commenter was going to say.
With SezWho our goal is to change the 90-9-1 rule for better. Not its not going to be 100% participation but we are lowering the threshold for participation and providing incentives in terms of portable credibility for all participants. As a result we are seeing significant improvement in terms of higher participation levels.
-Jitendra
Posted by: Jitendra | July 22, 2007 10:22 AMIn my opinion the difference between "Articles" and their "Comments" is diminishing except for a reference pointing to a "Source". Both formats need to have multimedia elements such as text, photos, videos, documents, links and possibly webfeeds to really conduct a thorough discussion of a subject. Text only Comments (or those that require hand coded HTML) are becoming insufficient at this stage in social website development.
Posted by: Milt Martin | July 22, 2007 10:50 AMHi Richard,
I noticed this new feature when you implemented it.
As user generated content is increasing and becoming a real added value for most of the web sites, a feature like SezWho is great for many reasons :
- contributors start to have a real online identity
- it incentives the users to contribute and simultaneously consolidates and develops a strong community
- it helps identifying the best contributions, which is helpful for quoting them
... and maybe it can help rewarding contributors, or at least improving their online reputation :)
I do not agree with Ali. I do think that this plugin is really made for blogs and news sites. But big online newspapers have already developped this type of feature, at least in their back-office. That's what we did on 20minutes.fr, a French site that I created and managed, and where we definitally pay a lot of attention to the UGC.
As Milt Martin stated, the next step of the plugin evolution should be the integration of multimedia content, but I guess the priority now is to meet the market of the main blog platforms like TypePad, WordPress, DotClear.
I am sure that many users will adopt this great feature in a short term! I will right now try to implement it on my personal blog :)
Posted by: Jean-Pierre Govekar | July 22, 2007 11:28 AMThreaded comments provide a bit more contextual clarity in conversations; allowing discussions to expand in context or sub-context. Digg provides this (Digg also ranks comments by user voting and collapses those comments which don't meet the viewing threshold required.)
That said, I don't necessarily want to screen or filter comments by authority (unless they reach astronomical levels into the hundreds or thousands like on digg, etc.) - I'd rather that they just be organized contextually rather than chronologically.
I do like the comment profile feature of sezwho though and the comment history that it provides.
Re: Milt, I don't know about the need for multimedia elements in comments. Links in comments can already point to multimedia references. Multimedia in comments is like sending file attachments by email. I think what is desired more by those taking part in conversations today is brevity...this post aside.
Posted by: Tom O'Leary | July 22, 2007 11:38 AMlooks interesting .. need to spend some time to checkout the full features
Posted by: varun | July 22, 2007 12:11 PMThis is a useful feature IMO. Will help to get more comments and will help to make comments more useful. One feature I would like is a simple (one click) way to say "note this person's blog so I can check it out later" without interrupting the flow of what I am currently reading.
Posted by: bernard lunn | July 22, 2007 3:33 PMThis article caught my eye from my Web 2.0 feed in BlogBridge. The reasoning expressed is intriguing. I am not a tech savvy user, but I learn by trying new things. My only reservation was a concern that you expect only those who are known entities to participate. Since I interpret this as something everyone should feel welcome to participate in, I am eager to try it and find out more.
Posted by: James Burns | July 22, 2007 4:35 PMBernard, Thanks...(putting the blog url etc. in a to check out later list is an interesting idea...We will think about it.
Jitendra
Posted by: Jitendra | July 22, 2007 4:43 PMI just posted a comment, which I don't see a way to edit, so here's an update. The download is currently available for Typepad and WordPress only, with the note that other platforms will be available soon. I have been using Blogger, so I will wait for that one. Thank You.
Posted by: James Burns | July 22, 2007 4:51 PMJames, we are working on other platforms other than MT and WP. Keep an eye on SezWho.com for the latest information.
Jitendra
Posted by: Jitendra | July 22, 2007 5:09 PMAs a blogger,I like the ability to link the old posts to the new posts based on comments.
Posted by: Eti | July 22, 2007 5:43 PMReputation based Comment rating system is excellent for most e-commerce web sites where consumers buy products based on reviews by fellow buyers without any bias and prejudice.
Posted by: Raj | July 22, 2007 6:31 PMRichard - This is a step in the right direction. As a reader, filtering comments will be helpful, particularly as R/WW grows and comments increase. I agree with Jitendra that anonymity (even in ratings) is a killer for a concept like this, so even though the email requirement will decrease the number of ratings it's key to keeping them valid.
Fixing the problem with blog comments is a big challenge -- it will be interesting to watch what part SezWho plays. As a commenter, tracking my comments across many blogs is clearly convenient, so I hope whoever wins in this space becomes widespread quickly.
Posted by: Brian Williams | July 22, 2007 8:42 PMit's great idea.
Posted by: takahiro | July 22, 2007 11:08 PMLooks very interesting indeed, this my turn out to be the next big hit for us blogger's.
Posted by: Ed | July 22, 2007 11:38 PMI’ve been running CommentPower/now SezWho for few months and I can really see it is used by commentators and readers to rate the content. The true utility of SezWho will be apparent with more blogs&forums participating. SezWho is generations ahead of the simple comment-rating mechanism found at popular sites like Engadget and Slashdot. A portal to showcase the ‘most-rated’ profiles and their content links would be a welcome addition.
Posted by: Vinod | July 23, 2007 1:07 AMI think perhaps describing SezWho's ranking math as an algorithm is exercising a little creative hyperbole but it's a great little system and I'd love to see standardised commenting systems on a high percentage of blogs and news sites. However saying that - there needs to be a competitor right?
Posted by: Phill Midwinter | July 23, 2007 1:24 AMyes, this is the stuff that i love, as implemented in the icanhascheezburger.com. this works to identify reliable commenters and eliminates site trolls.
Posted by: syahid ali | July 23, 2007 3:45 AMi like the way it was designed. Can we have this plugin too for our blog? If yes, should we need to buy it or it's available for free?
Posted by: SELaplana | July 23, 2007 3:59 AMI applaud the reputation system, but what I really want, which is something that has kept Slashdot and Digg in the game, is a filter mechanism for the highest rated comments. I am sure you have considered it, but I just wanted to register my vote for that.
Regardless, the creators of SezWho are on to something really big. I am so sick and tired of hearing about the need ID protocol online.
Posted by: Derek T | July 23, 2007 6:25 AMVery useful. But I dont want to remember another userid/password pair.
Posted by: Thejesh GN | July 23, 2007 7:28 AMJitendra can we have OpenId support?
It's a very interesting tool; but it could be better, however, by including the ability to rate TrackBacks and PingBacks "comments". I usually find this type of cross-blog discussion richer.
Posted by: nongeek | July 23, 2007 8:07 AMWhile the system does have its uses, I do wonder if it is useful for a blog. Like what some users have said earlier, this would be more useful for a forum to determine if the topics were useful to the reader.
Would this work well for a blog? I hope so. Considering that it is pretty simple to use (just a one time email signup and you are good to go), its take up rate would be pretty high.
Plus the fact that the owner can choose to only allow comments of a certain ranking, it does help in the spam cleanup while at the same time, limit those who want to come on board.
Posted by: Tariq Bamadhaj | July 23, 2007 8:47 AMSezWho sounds like and interesting idea...I am gonna check it. out...
Posted by: Tania | July 23, 2007 11:21 AMThis is a cool idea...Looking forward to checking it out.
Posted by: Junaidj | July 23, 2007 12:36 PMI wrote about them here:
Posted by: Sramana Mitra | July 23, 2007 3:44 PMhttp://sramanamitra.com/2007/07/19/a-service-for-active-netizens/
I think this new feature's really useful
Posted by: Andy Pipes | July 24, 2007 3:43 AMHey, Richard!
I love your point about SezWho being centered around Greg rather than around R/WW. I really think distributed systems are vital for our mental survival in the vast Web terrain; if we can't carry our profiles, reputations, preferences and filters with us, we'll gradually become buried in the maintenance of thousands of tiny connections with each site we visit. I've got a mental image of an overstuffed wallet with hundreds of different credit cards -- wouldn't you be better off with just one?
I put up a post tonight sparked by this piece. Thanks for the inspiration!
Posted by: Kaila Colbin | July 25, 2007 3:11 AMThis looks like a winner...
Posted by: Gady | July 27, 2007 2:41 PMvery good concept
Posted by: virendra | August 6, 2007 6:06 AMThis sounds great...cool idea.
Posted by: Manish | August 13, 2007 3:31 PM