How to Get Good Comments – Make it Hard?
Here’s an interesting article about design factors the mean digg.com is more susceptible to “gaming” – artificially inflating the popularity of an item.
When you think “comments on sites”, the first thought that often comes to mind is: “how to we make it easy for people to comment? – we have to encourage that behaviour”.
But as this article notes:
Derek Powazek in his book Design for Community, makes the point that the harder it is for someone to comment on something, the better the comments are. In other words, people who jump through hoops (or pay attention long enough) to comment are the ones who really care about the subject matter, they’re invested in the story and see value in taking the time to respond.