Connect with us

Updates

Three Reasons We Decided to Close the Comments at PFB

Thank you for understanding.

Published

on

As of 3 p.m. today, the comments section here at PFB is officially closed on all future posts. That feels weird to type, even if it wasn’t all that difficult to pull the trigger on.

This is a move we have been discussing among our team for a while now, and we finally felt like it was time. There are many reasons for that. Some I’ll disclose below and some are more behind the scenes, but as always if you have questions or comments or thoughts or just want to holler about something, you can email me at kyle dot goodwin dot porter at gmail dot com.

Three reasons we closed the comments, let’s go.

1. Centralized conversation: With our forum — dubbed The Chamber — now in place and thriving, that’s a natural place for conversation to take place and community to unfold. The comments section was an unnatural place for these two things to happen. If you want to discuss an article now, it’s very easy to copy the URL, drop it in The Chamber and fire off your takes. You can do so right here. It’s a warmer, more manageable, friendlier atmosphere that feels less out of control than the comments section.

2. Segmentation of the business: Buzzword central over here today (which is kind of embarrassing). Here’s the thing, PFB is no longer a blog. It’s a media company. Because our community is one arm of this company, it feels silly to have that community split between the comments section and The Chamber. We would rather house everything in one place. This allows us to more easily stamp out the trolls that make your reading experience lousy. The Chamber has (very quickly) become one of the most important parts of our business, and we’re excited to keep growing it in the right ways.

3. Search success: One thing I found myself doing often is trying to search through witty or clever comments (which were sometimes few and far between). Our setup in the comments section was terrible for this. Our setup on The Chamber is much better. Search is easier, replies and threads are easier. It’s just better and cleaner for both the main site and The Chamber.

The other thing I should mention here is that this is not necessarily a forever thing. If this goes horrendously — we don’t think it will — we can open the comments back up with one click. But for now, if you want to talk OSU sports, if you want to talk about our articles, if you want to yelp about Chuba and Cade or anything else, The Chamber is the better spot for that, both now and hopefully well into the future.

We realize this will be frustrating to some and rejoiced by others. Our goal in all of this is to be the best provider of OSU news and community anywhere in the world. We think doing this helps us toward that goal and generates a better product for those of you who read, comment, think and participate in the conversation.

If you want to participate in The Chamber, you can sign up for a free account right here.

Most Read

Copyright © 2011- 2023 White Maple Media