Ask EchoJS: Why EchoJS users don't comment?

16 up and 2 down, posted by talyssonoc 3686 days ago 15 comments

chris-l 3686 days ago. link 7 points ▲ ▼

Agree with jayfallon; there are almost no comments because most of the time a big discussion is not needed.

Example: 

Someone post about a tutorial to use grunt and browserify.

What kind of comments it would have in that scenario?
"oh yet another tutorial for browserify"
"ah browserify sucks, requirejs rules!"
"oh good, I been waiting to try browerify!"
"hey! browserify doesn't suck!"
"grunt? gulp ftw!"

I don't think that kind of silly comments would make the community any good. I don't think it would help to grow the community, except that maybe it would attract trolls.

Right now, people comment when they *really* have something to say, and I think is better this way.

Replies

TheSisb 3686 days ago. link 3 points ▲ ▼

I really have to say that I really agree with:
"Right now, people comment when they *really* have something to say, and I think is better this way."

egecan 3676 days ago. link 3 points ▲ ▼

Though it takes a single chain of inside-jokes to go from full elegant to reddit, as in:

I really had to say that I agree with the comment you agreed in what you had to say.

(Forgive me for this, won't happen again =) )

ndgaulin 3673 days ago. link 1 point ▲ ▼

I don't *really* disagree with what you're saying because negative feedback is worse than no feedback at all, but if you don't take the time to post in here and become an *active* member of a *community*, then what really is the point? I feel that EchoJS is like the "trending" section on social media sites, but for JavaScript. You just take a glance at it every now and then, and if you see something interesting you click it and maybe vote it up. I post plenty of things on here that I would actually like feedback on (using various accounts since half the time I can't remember which password I have on here and why would karma matter without an actual community?) and I think I've only gotten one or two comments...ever. It's actually quite disappointing. I've always been very eager to interact with others and provide feedback on their stuff, but when the community doesn't really seem that accepting (since it's a ghost town) and the site doesn't really offer any simple way to be notified, what do you expect?

I remember when I first started using this site and made a post; since there was no way to be notified of any comments or replies to comments, I checked back in every once in a while so I could respond to any feedback I received. Instead, I realized that most submissions in here never get any comments at all. So now a days, what do I do? I just post something and then never really come back to check on it, because the site itself and its *users* never really make much of an effort to become a *community*.

So while you say people should only post when they have something they *really* want to say, that's not how you build a community. If everyone in the world only spoke when they had something really important to say, only a small group of people would do all the talking, which is exactly the way things are now. I mean, only one out of every two posts on the homepage have comments, and over half of those with comments are just one comment, which doesn't constitute a discussion. So that means, out of all the posts on the homepage, only ~25% of them actually have any discussions at all. That's a pretty pathetic statistic in my opinion.

talyssonoc 3672 days ago. link 0 point ▲ ▼

Man, I couldn't agree more! I really hope that EchoJS turns into a real community, with people discussing projects, creating projects together, discovering new tools, libs and so on.

JavaScript is in the highlights more than ever because of Node, and libs like Angular and React, build a real community around JS developers would be great, but if people don't try to interact it will never happen...

basicallydan 3685 days ago. link 1 point ▲ ▼

I agree, it's better this way :)

I'm glad the OP brought it up, but I hope we don't see an unflux of unnecessary comments now. Because of echoJS's nature as a targeted, specific forum for JavaScript news, there's rarely much need for discussion.

Hacker News is very active because it's so broad (often "Hacker" isn't even the target audience) and Designer News is often used as a feedback portal. Not so much on echoJS.