Content Strategy Design Patterns

Users can reply to other users' comments; replies are shown visually connected to the original comment, usually indented underneath.  

Users often feel an emotional need to correct, disagree with or expand on another person's statement or opinion. Nested comments allow these replies and discussions to be easily made, read and extended by other users.  

Use this pattern when you have, or want to encourage, highly-engaged visitors and content that prompts value-added discussion. This pattern works best when visitors belong to a narrow niche (e.g. fans of a particular movie/book genre/arist), rather than a wide range of opposing - and potentially argumentative - viewpoints.  

Most popular content management systems and blog platforms (e.g. [http://wordpress.org/ Wordpress]) offer Nested Comment support. If yours does not, use a third-party plugin like [http://disqus.com/ Disqus] or [http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments Facebook Comments] to embed nested comments.

 

It's important to consider comment moderation for nested comments, where heated arguments are more likely to occur.

Nested comments encourage interaction, return visits and - as users build-up their reputation over a number of discussions - loyalty. User discussion can also add value to the original article/post/content, and may over time become as important as the main content, for regular users.

[[Image:Hacker-news-threaded-comments.png|thumb|left|Nested comments on Hacker News offer much insight for web Start-Up companies.]]

[[Category:Comments]] [[Category:Social]]