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UPDATE: They are now live on all SB Nation sites!
Last month, we released a new set of commenting code on SB Nation. At the time, there were very few changes to the functionality within comments; we were just using a new type of javascript to power the comments to help performance. This upgrade in javascript also set us up to more easily change and upgrade the commenting system moving forward. The first of those upgrades is here and it is exciting: comments on SB Nation will now be editable.
Once this update is released later this week, when you post a comment you will then have 90 seconds to edit that comment. You'll see a countdown timer and a progress bar that scrolls from right to left indicating how much time you have left on the edit. Editing the comment does not reset the timer, but you can edit multiple times in the 90 second window. This behavior has been live on both of Vox Media's other verticals, The Verge and Polygon for the past few months and it's been very successful and users have embraced it.
In addition to adding comment editing, this release would also enable a new system for collapsing comments. Collapsing a top level comment collapses all of its replies (something that is currently happening now), but the collapsed replies will no longer be shown as titles only. They will now be completely hidden beneath the parent comment (which will show as collapsed comments do today). This allows users to hide sub-threads they're not interested in and skip further down the page without scrolling. Additionally, comments will no longer need titles to be collapsed. Any comment can be collapsed. This cuts down on folks having trouble collapsing large images or GIFs because the poster forgot a title. Users will also have the option to set how they want comments to load by default.
Both of these new functions will work on mobile as well when we go live. In addition to the previously released mobile touch controls for comment navigation, this makes mobile functionality really robust on SB Nation.
We're really excited about this new functionality and we're confident you will be, too. This has long been the most-requested functionality on SB Nation and we're thrilled to have found a workable and elegant solution to finally fulfill that request. We're targeting later this week for the release and I will post an update here once we're nailed down the exact date. Get excited.
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