Just to echo previous sentiments really: I much preferred the comments being sorted by date order.The problem is that the way we have used the system in the past:1) Often when 'replying' to a previous comment people just replied to the thread, not the comment. Now this reply can be totally separated from what it was replying to.2) The old rating system encouraged you to vote up something that was "insightful or funny", unfortunately this means that lots of humorous comments have now been moved to the top so you have to wade through them before finding information.3) Some old posts from vanilla, BC and even WotLK got loads and loads of votes because the information they gave at the time was good. Unfortunately over time the information has become incorrect. Personally I never felt like going through giving negatives for information that was correct at the time but was now out of date as I didn't want to ruin people's reps for comments they posted in good faith. However, this means that some of these posts are now completely out of date but with a high number of positive votes so you have to really search for correct, current information.4) Say a change has been made in 4.3 (e.g. Sinister Squashling is no longer BoP), I go on to the correct page and I have to search through the whole thing to see if someone else has already mentioned this rather than just look at the end.
As a slight counter to all the 'sort by date, go to the end to see the latest' comments, I never found that worked for me as often the most useful posts about things that have been changed recently were nested in replies to older comments. I always used, and still will use, the 'filter by patch' drop down as it was much more useful than just going to the end.
Like many others have said, this change took me completely by surprise and I'm sure any other IT project managers out there will agree that's is never a good thing from a user happiness perspective.I am sure I will get used to the changes to the comment system, users always do even when they think they won't. And even though I could not care less about the "reputation" system on Wowhead (I did not even know it could impact what you could do or not do on the site...), it seems that many people DO care about their Rep and take pride in having highly rated comments.Which leads me to highlight a concern someone else mentioned earlier. The old system seemed to allow comments to stay highly rated forever, which I enjoyed because I'm fascinated by the history of the game (I only started playing in WOTLK), but also they apparently provided reputation for people that took the time to create quality content for the database.This new format encourages downrating of older comments that are no longer relevant because of changes to the game, thereby removing the reputation gains of the person who spent time and energy crafting something that was valuable for thousands of people for significant periods of time.Even though I don't care about reputation myself, that just doesn't sit right with me.Let me know if I am incorrect in my assessment of how the rating system works and effects reputation...
My first reaction when visiting Wowhead today was WTF! I am a frequent user of the site, often visiting multiple times a day, yet I was completely unaware of any proposed changes. As many others have echoed, there should have been a more visible notification of the impending changes and a much longer testing period. Personally I loved the old system, and while it needed improvements, I am not sure such a drastic change was necessary. I do appreciate the changes to rep to prevent abuse of the system, however I don't care for the new look at all. I find it much harder to read now. The dark white text and thin font on gray background strains the eyes when you try to read any significant sized comment. I miss the green text. It was signature, signaled a popular comment and was just easier to see. The white text on gray background was exactly why I avoiding using the Wowhead forums - too hard on the eyes. Now, rather than giving the forums a facelift, you have chosen to push that look to the commenting system, and I think it is a mistake. As another commenter mentioned the change seems to take more resources as well, as the site is more sluggish in my browser now. I believe it was suggested that this is because all the comments have to be loaded, included purged and deleted ones, but I am not a programmer so couldn't say. But, I really liked how I could quickly load up an item and scan for relative information. I don't seem to be able to do that anymore.My number one complaint of those whole new system is that is made an absolute mess of the comments. The worth of the information and ease of finding good comments was what made this site so valuable, IMO. The changes have thrown the comments for many items into complete disarray. The information feels disjointed where it once felt orderly and logical. Comments that are no longer relevant, or comments that were funny are sitting at the top, and a lot of very good information has been buried because they are replies. I understand the idea was that the high rated information should be at the top and thus easy to find. But, the flaw in that thinking is assuming the highest rated comments are the most relevant. Often, the highest comments were older posts that had become high rated over time, or were once useful but no longer accurate due to patch changes. Other times they are comments that required the context of the thread to make sense and now seem out of place due to the lack of any logical order. The new and more relevant comments are buried because they have yet to be voted up and so the information becomes much harder to find than it was previously. On an item with any amount of high-rated lengthy comments, I feel like I am getting hit by a wall of text, and I quickly lose desire to scroll forever to find something new and relevant. I understand the ideal is that the new, more relevant comments will eventually be voted up. But, what will likely happen is that the older content is voted down, which if it affects rep, does a disservice to the people that took the time to write detailed helpful comments that only became irrelevant due to a change made by Blizzard.
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
People who comment are not necessarily people who use the forums, so a notice of forthcoming changes beside the comment fields would have been a good idea.
I'm all for the new system, with one exception. I feel like we need to be able to downrate replies to a comment. For example, I had posted a tip on an item's page. Someone replied with flat out incorrect info, and I couldn't downrate them to make it invisible.It's an issue when people are flat-out immune to downrating for saying things that really should be downrated.
Please change it back. I come here for quick information, so I can smoothly play wow.Not to spend time on the forums figuring out every issue forum related. As it is, it is completely unusable for me. I have already spent too much time on this. So please change it back. Just change it back!
The new system's formatting makes comments impossible to read for me. The default being set to rating rather than date is part of this.The removal of comment nesting separating comments from replies is also extremely disconcerting.The site is virtually un-navigable to me now and I will probably stop using it altogether at this point as a result of this drastic change. Sorry.
I'm not a forum-goer, so I'm one of those people who was completely blindsided by this change. I thought I might get used to it, and I can already tell I'm not going to. As others have already said, the new format is clunky, ugly, and hard to follow, and the new default organization of most popular first is not logical (most of the quests I looked at today had absolutely useless comments (such as "witty" remarks about the quest text, for example) ranked highest, not actual, helpful information). I've been coming to Wowhead for years for quick information when I'm stuck on a quest. This new system is not quick. It takes me much longer to find the information I need because of the way comments/replies are sorted now. The gigantic rating numbers are an eyesore (I don't believe that "hard to see the +/-" excuse for one second - there's such a thing as zooming in your browser if you really are having troubles seeing things. Claiming it was "too hard to see" is a copout).Please, if you aren't going to change it back, at least give us an option we can toggle in our account settings to view things in the old or the new format. As it is right now, the most important part of the site - the actual database - is completely unusable to me.
It's good to see updates to something that has been the same for a while :) I do like the new UI for voting.I've been playing with the new system a bit and there are a few things I'm not sure I like. Sorry if these have been mentioned already, I haven't had time to read all the comments here.I miss the text editing buttons in the reply box. I didn't realize I could do anything other than plain text until I read this blog post. Also there's no preview to check out trying to insert any formatting other than plain text.Given that there's no preview, it would be nice if there was an edit button. I can't figure out how to edit my reply. I guess I can delete it and add it again... but it actually took me a bit to think of that as a solution to my edit problem.The change in sort has really broken the existing conversations in the comments. Going through and reading comments on items in the site today there were a lot of things that just didn't make sense, and my impulse was to try to go clean them out, but I'm not sure that's the right thing to do. I can see there's still a bit of discussion on whether the default sort change is a good thing or not :) but it almost seems like you should encourage one sort or the other - it would be unfortunate to keep all of the posts that only make sense in context around, but have them not make sense to whatever portion of the user base doesn't choose to sort by date. Although I guess those comments probably wouldn't be highly rated anyway.Although to add my two cents on the issue - I think I like the idea of showing highly rated comments first. It just doesn't work very well with the comments that are already here. Maybe it will work out better once people get used to it and create more self-contained posts.