Two glaring flaws with VOAT system (pizzagatemods)

submitted ago by rwb

I detect two major flaws in how VOAT functions:

  1. There is no way to expand all comments in a given thread. In threads populated by many comments, some are concealed, where one has to click to view. It is extremely easy to miss good content buried in a reply well down a tree, even when looking for these, and it takes too much time to open each one manually. There should be an expand all function so nothing can be overlooked.

  2. It is often difficult to tell which responses are to which posts. VOAT's system of tree expansion is not intuitive or simple visually. I am often laboring to figure out which comment is in response to which comment.

I would be grateful to know if these are known issues and if there is any prospect for a solution in the future. Thank you.

Vindicator ago

Hi rwb,

I know the expand all function would be awesome -- unfortunately, this is one of the means Voat uses to conserve precious bandwidth/server space. Voat is a very lean, start-up organization with limited staff and financial resources. You can help matters by becoming a monthly subscriber, but this is a function of where they are in their growth phase. I don't know how soon that will change. You can get an idea of the current status of things by keeping an eye on v/announcements.

Regarding comment replies, one way to tell who a comment replied to is to click "parent" in the options below the comment. This will show you just the thread of reply and the comment. Hope that helps.

rwb ago

Hi Vindicator,

Thanks for the reply. The parent option will help me. I can also appreciate the theory of bandwidth conservation, but to be candid, I'm just not sure it's as effective as one might hope, and thus perhaps not worth the potential for certain readers to miss or deprive themselves of key content. Here's why. I looked at a typical thread with 70 comments, of which 9 or about 13% of posts were hidden. 13% might seem like a decent savings, and it is, but if someone wants to see hidden messages and starts to manually open them, they're going to be opened anyway whether this is done with an open all function or they're opened individually, and any savings is nullified while necessitating users inclined to read everything to open perhaps another 9 more of them manually, which is very inconvenient and impinges on ones reading flow and concentration. I have often missed comments buried deep in a particular branch.

If one adds to the equation users who will attempt to click all hidden comments, the practical bandwidth savings is probably more like 5%. There is another argument in that those participants willing to engage in a dialog are more committed to the conversation than someone with a one off comment, meaning there is a better chance that the buried comments contain good content.

A compromise might be keeping the show comment function to save bandwidth as it currently exists, but change it so that if a person clicks on a specific show comment containing dialog of two people, any consequent posts that are hidden in that one branch should open up in entirety. I believe this would only increase bandwidth marginally yet make for a much more pleasing reading experience for those who are going to open hidden comments anyway.

Vindicator ago

Great thoughts. I think you should cross-post to v/voatdev.

rwb ago

Thanks. Will do.

sensitive ago

Did anything come out of that?

rwb ago

Hi sensitive, I did submit the idea along with a few others as recommended by Vindicator to a specific thread that happened to pop up around that time requesting input into possible ways Voat could be improved. I haven't noticed any change.

sensitive ago

Thanks. I rather meant if you got some sort of reply there. Seems you didn't. A pity.

rwb ago

That particular thread accepted comments anonymously. I was assigned a number instead of rwb, so it seems possible the system might not notify me if there were responses. The thread was very busy since it was sent to all Voat categories. By the time I posted there were perhaps hundreds of posts, so the observations might have been overlooked.