Reflection of a Silent Tragedy

Dear tumblr staff, you recently robbed us of our beloved comment system.

Rumor has it that one of the reasons you took our comments away was that the feature was hardly being used. I find this hard to believe, because we in the so-called simblr community used comments all the time! We might be a small niche to you, but a really huge part of people who like to play the Sims games and show their gameplay and their mods, have gathered here, on tumblr, because our needs have been met here. So far! With the comment system gone, many talk about leaving tumblr to look for a new virtual home. Considering going back to forums, checking out other blogging platforms. There is not much use for half a community to stay whereas the other half goes somewhere else. Platform movements like this have happened in the past in the simming community and there is a chance that if you do not bring comments or something similar back asap, the simblr community on tumblr will fall apart. If you really care for your users, then please also take into account what you believe is a minority – the people who love the comment system! Let me tell you why we love comments so much. Comments are directly linked to a specific post and can be directed at someone in particular, but still be read openly. They will not appear on the replier’s blog, but on the post of the originator. People who will browse the replier’s blog might not care about that specific discussion, and with comments, the blog does not get cluttered by reply reblogs. People reading the originator’s blog, however, are able to see the comments belonging to that post. This is really useful to us! Why do we prefer to comment instead of writing a fanmail, an ask, or a reblog? Other options do not feel as straight-forward as comments. For one, for a fanmail, you have to follow that person. Then, you have to visit the message board and leave the dashboard. The fanmail is physically separate from the context the fanmail might be written. The writer is in need to explain the context of the fanmail. Especially if the comment is about a specific post, it is much more convenient to see the it directly in conjunction with the image that’s been talked about. A fanmail is more time-consuming than simple comment. Also, when replying to a fanmail, the original post gets taken away, making it hard to revisit a conversation later on. For asks, you also have to leave your dash to go to a person’s blog. It disrupts the flow of browsing on the dashboard and you have to rely on the person receiving the ask to post it publicly or privately or not at all. Finally, reblogs… of course we also use reblogs! But huge text post reblogs are of a rarer kind, those are mostly statement posts where a hot topic is discussed that garners a wider interest. We like to fill our blogs with original content and reblog the things we feel passionate about.

The fun thing about comments is that you see something on your dash that you like, open the bubble with one click, type a few words and scroll on to the next post on your dash. It is effective and feels good to use comments!

I had to do this:

You must have @new-xkit-extension installed on your browser

Click on the XKit button on you dash

Go to the “Other” Tab

Scroll down and click on “XKit Editor”

Click on “Open XKit Editor”

Wait until it loads

Click on “New Extension”

Name new extension “comments”

Open the provided Pastebin link in a new tab

Copy the code from Pastebin

Paste code into New Extension area

Click “Save Extension”

Close XKit Editor tab

Reopen Tumblr dash