Commenting vs Forums

I just cracked the Slate commenting code!

Okay, it wasn't that complicated. But it was hidden which is interesting in and of itself. In the list of options next to the piece I was reading on the Amazon Kindle (the generic print, email, facebook, etc) was a link titled "discuss." Lo and behold, "discuss" led to a forum specifically built around the article.

Instead of using a comment-style format, Slate relies on a forum approach which is reminiscent of the old-school bulletin board days of the Internet. And there are a surprising quantity of categories -- over 64 different threads with as few as zero and as many as 21. And each thread can be rated (I can't really tell if the rating system is done by users or moderators, but most of the time when there is a rating system it is done by the users). So the thread with the most replies is 21, but has a rating of -2. Next in line is a discussion with 18 replies and a rating of +5.

I tried to post a reply, but after 6 efforts to retrieve my username and password from the system (which told me repeatedly that my email address already had a registered user and that I could recover my password by just entering my email address and username -- which I don't remember!) I gave up. Had I managed to get in, here are the basic points I would have conveyed...