Flights From Hell now offers story and comment ratings. We’ve added these services to help boost story and comment quality, promote more interaction, and enhance the overall experience of using our website.
The story rating service comes from Polldaddy and the comment rating service comes from IntenseDebate. Both companies were purchased in 2008 by Automatic, the company that developed the WordPress blogging and website software that Flights From Hell uses.
Stories are rated from 1 star (Very Poor) up to 5 stars (Totally Awesome!). Next to the stars is a blue information icon; placing a cursor over it causes a display to pop-up showing which stories received the highest ratings over specific time periods. Controls are in place to prevent the same person from voting multiple times.
Comments are rated using a “Nero” system; approval is given by clicking on a thumbs up icon and disapproval by clicking on a thumbs down icon. A comment receives a +1 rating when a thumbs up vote is cast; a -1 rating is received when a thumbs down vote is cast. For example, if a comment has a +2 score and someone subsequently clicks on a thumbs down icon, the comment will have an overall score of +1.
Commenters who have an IntenseDebate account can build up reputation points that are based, in part, on their overall comment scores across all sites that use IntenseDebate (such as Dinners From Hell). They can also keep track of all of their comments across all sites that use IntenseDebate, as well as check the profiles of – and follow – other commenters with similar accounts. It is not necessary to sign up for an account in order to post a comment – simply add a name and email address (which will never be displayed publicly) and comment away as you always have.
Besides comment ratings, the service includes lots of other features designed to improve the commenting experience. Readers now have the ability to sort comments by date, comment rating, or last activity. Social networking services are easily accessible. Commenters can connect to their Twitter account and send a simultaneous tweet when posting a comment. Readers can subscribe to individual blog post comments – or to all blog post comments – through RSS readers or via email (as they’ve long been able to do for post notifications on Flights From Hell). Those submitting comments can receive email alerts when a response is posted, or they can subscribe to all comments for a post.
As always, commenters are invited to include an avatar when posting a comment. For information about how to acquire your own avatar, check out this video about Gravatar which is also owned by Automatic: Introducing Gravatar.
Another feature that you’ll find is a Report link for reporting inappropriate comments. An example of an inappropriate comment would be one that directs a threat or obscene remark towards a poster or another commenter. An inappropriate comment would not be one that simply voices a disagreement. One can respond to a disagreeable remark by clicking “thumbs down,” submitting a reply, or just ignoring it. Check out our Comment Policy page for information about our policies. Please keep in mind that story writers deserve consideration for taking the time and trouble to share their experience. Without writers we wouldn’t have a website.
It’s hoped that these new services add to your enjoyment of Flights From Hell. Feel free to rate not only new stories that come up, but also those stories (and even comments) that we’ve shared in the past. Please contact us if you have any questions or suggestions. One more thing – feel free to rate this post and submit your comments!
