The New York Times rolled out its new commenting system on Wednesday. The new feature supports nesting comments, sharing on Twitter and Facebook, and something called the “trusted” commenter program, which evokes the fast line past the TSA. The new system also does away with numbers, making it harder to refer to comment #301 about Tahrir Square, leaving commenters to refer to Joe from Poughkeepsie.
But based on the rapid response from the Times’ erudite readers, we have to wonder if they tested this release before it went live.
The biggest issue was the length of text displayed before viewers had to click a Read More… button. It was no longer than a tweet–2 1/3 very short lines.
Remarkably, the Times fixed this within a day, but not before enraging hundreds of vocal, loyal readers: commenters.
Congratulations to the Times for responding to feedback and removing this button. We can’t help but wonder if usability testing would have raised the issues before launch.
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