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Are subjects passé in comments on the post-social media web? Or are they a valid feature to enable human eye-scanning and relevant search results?
It is the opinion of this anonymous submitter that putting "Subjects are an anachronism" [1] or "SubjectsinCommentsareStupid" [2] is unhelpful at best and spam at worst. SoylentNews has a long legacy going back to Chips & Dips, the predecessor site to Slashdot (from whose code SoylentNews was forked).
With that in mind, subjects are not a vestigial feature but a useful and defining one. It makes longer threads friendly to readers, and separates this site from Digg, Reddit, Voat, and so many other disposable social media sites. Just as email would be worse without subjects, so too would SoylentNews.
Ed Note: I'm of two minds as to running this story. This is presented as one person's opinion and makes a case for continuing to have a Subject for each comment. As noted, others do not feel the same way. As SoylentNews is a community, your input guides us. So, what say you? Should we continue as-is? Make subjects optional? Dispense with them entirely? Other? What benefits and/or problems are likely to result?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday August 25 2016, @02:29PM
I don't know how many others find it difficult to follow some threads in which the actual topic under discussion changes slightly but the subject headers are just Re:blah blah blah, but I find it spoils the flow of some conversations when commenters are not all talking about the same thing but haven't bothered to indicate it as such by a change of subject.
I much prefer to have a useful subject for each comment but that also requires a change in individual attitudes rather than just a blanket decision to keep or remove them. I agree with FatPhil and others in their comments earlier - the subject headers are an important (to me) part of the thread discussion. I cannot change those who do not agree or are simply too lazy to type something, but I am more likely to read a discussion that has subjects rather than a long stream of Re: blah
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Thursday August 25 2016, @03:30PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday August 25 2016, @11:31PM
I'm not trying to be a pedantic asshole (at the moment), I just think this is useful to know: Disagree is +0.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 26 2016, @09:58AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves