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As outlined in the announcement of an experiment for commenting, earlier this week we rolled out the first of several upcoming experiments related to the commenting feature, which allows users who have earned the commenting privilege (>50 reputation) to say thanks to post authors. It currently looks like this:

Screenshot of the new add a comment pop over. There are two options: "comment with a clarification", "Say thanks, this helped me"

As mentioned earlier, at this point we’re only releasing the part of the feature that allows for thanking, and will be releasing the accompanying notification it generates and auto-upvote in the coming weeks— so while the initial uses of the feature will produce no notification for the time being, once that is rolled out all of those notifications will be sent out.

We’ll be monitoring this post for the next two weeks and will also continue to review the feedback already shared on the original post linked above. The next phase will include an additional dropdown item for the Discussions portion and will have a follow-up post for this phase of the experiment. Please report any bugs you may run into, as well as any feedback you may have in individual answers below.

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    Are you aware of the bugs reported on the original announcement? One is that particularly annoying is that the new UI broke the Auto Review Comments. Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 17:54
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    @M-- And totally broke commenting in many review queues Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 19:16
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    I suspect the reason this post is getting downvotes is less because the company is doing the right thing, and asking for feedback, but because the UX for many of the users that are active on Meta has been quite affected on Stack Overflow, and the bugs that the initial release had. The request for feedback on the feature is good, and the overall idea is still good, but for the experienced users, I don't think it was expected that it was going to forced on us as well. Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 19:49
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    The problem they want to solve is a good problem to solve... but i wouldn't consider this feature (a popup when clicking add comment instead of a... comment field...) a good feature. Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 21:12
  • Ain't that the way of it. I suppose if it was an easy problem, it'd have been solved by now. Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 22:18
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    Please do add some form of opt-out somewhere. This workflow significantly impairs moderation/curation work, as we have to click twice to comment on posts that we moderate. Making it take more time to do a simple action such as posting a comment makes me want to not leave comments anymore, which inevitably will cause frustration in folks who get their post deleted/edited/closed/etc and don't know why. Commented Feb 14, 2025 at 11:20
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    if anyone has written a userscript to fix this breakage, please share it. I quickly lose any will to continue giving this company free content, hence have no drive to write such a workaround for something they broke. Commented Feb 15, 2025 at 18:22
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    Literally no responses to any of the feedback. I'm predicting this will go to "we've heard your extremely valid complaints and filed it into the black hole of GFY" Commented Feb 16, 2025 at 23:38
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    This is a horribly frustrating "wasted extra click" for folks that have contributed for years. I get it, it helps new members think before commenting. That said, why are we not smarter about how we implement these things? Why are these nanny comment extra-clicks not just shown to users without 1000 rep. or 5000 rep (pick your number). Why make the site more frustrating to use for long-time members? Commented Feb 17, 2025 at 4:13
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    I really cannot overstate how much i hate this stupid feature. 15 years of curation on this site with almost 30,000 undeleted comments and you feel that experienced users like me need to be treated like a baby who can't rub two blocks together. It's insulting Commented Feb 18, 2025 at 6:29
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    @user4581301 No, it is an easy problem. It's just that the devs' interest and priorities are elsewhere. They are aligned with business metrics rather than making a good product. That's what happens when your company is owned by private equity. Commented Feb 18, 2025 at 15:24
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    The stackoverflow ux is getting bad gradually -_- Commented Feb 19, 2025 at 5:05
  • @Phil I feel the same way, and am in total agreement. This is patronising, and interrupts our workflow. Commented Feb 27, 2025 at 12:11
  • @DavidC.Rankin Could I ask which number you would pick as the threshold? I have more than 1500 rep and less than 2000, and while this would not be considered high-rep by every user, I would certainly like to be able to opt out of this. Commented Feb 27, 2025 at 12:13
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    @AJM - Any number from me would be a guess. I'd say by the time you have 1000 rep, you understand what comments are for. But as building rep has slowed as the site has matured, that may need to be 500 or somewhere in between. SE likely has data that either shows the average time for building rep for each 100, or SE has data that shows the baseline rep for those that tend to stick around and contribute. Just some reasoned number for rep would be fine. And when a user gets there, take that bloody comment confirmation away :) Commented Feb 27, 2025 at 20:57

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(summarizing some feedback from the parent post) It's very annoying to have to take multiple actions to create a comment on the majority of posts now.

People raised options:

  • add a setting to disable this new behaviour
  • flatten the dropdown into inline buttons
  • only apply the new behaviour to users with little site experience (frequency of votes cast could be a heuristic, or number / recent rate of comments deleted by a mod as no longer needed, or reputation)

There are also bugs with the thing not working in review queue pages, and breaking after loading page updates from prompts like "a new answer has been added".

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    Maybe limit the feature to comments on answers? Without having any number to back it, I assume most thank you comments are on answers and not on questions. But most comments that curators write are on questions. Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 21:26
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    Yes please. Meta always asks for feature toggles because they hate all change but... this really needs a feature toggle. Commented Feb 14, 2025 at 7:54
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    this really doesn't need a feature toggle. it's not a feature, it's an annoyance. it only "needs" to be shown to new users, it never "needs" to be shown to experienced users. making me opt out of this is just as much of an insult as subjecting me to it indiscriminately. this whole experiment is an exercise in how to drive the site into the ground. Commented Feb 15, 2025 at 18:19
  • @ChristophRackwitz Or just have no tact and go on the slamming tour which makes it very hard for the company to have any kind of dialogue through meta at all, sure. Commented Feb 18, 2025 at 13:34
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    you labor under the mistaken impression that "the company" were one of us, an equal, that discussion happened at eye level. none of that is true. we are subjects of the company. we are the product. we produce the content that attracts page views, which equals ad money. they can do to us whatever they want, and we're powerless to stop it. all we can do is stop playing their gamified perpetuum mobile. many people have had many ways of describing their treatment of us. but please, defend a company's mistakes. that'll surely help me find some way of coming around to your way of seeing it. Commented Feb 18, 2025 at 18:04
  • @BDL I ran into this new feature when leaving a comment on an answer. I do not think it is appropriate for comments on answers any more than it is for comments on questions. Commented Feb 27, 2025 at 12:14
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Most of my comments are on questions that have no answers at that time. I am usually commenting to probe new users to supply reproducible code and data.

I am now asked whether I want to thank this user. I have two large issues with this:

  1. It is extremely annoying that such a common use of a comment for an experienced user like me is now hidden behind a pop-up menu. Am I supposed to just drive-by down-vote all these questions now? What is the design intent? Sure, I would also love it if I don't have to comment on 80% of the questions that get posted, but that is not the world we live in.

  2. Why would I want to thank a user for asking a question anyway? Is that really expected to be a common use case? Can it at least be only applied to answers?

This feature is probably the most annoying thing (to me) that has been pushed in years.

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    You really can't see any reason to thank (=upvote) a question? Writing a good question is hard work. Maybe we should get rid of the upvote button as well then. Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 20:16
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    I can (and do) already upvote questions using the upvote button. It is a great button. I don't need to say "Thanks, this helped me" (because it did not help me with anything), nor send a thank you notification to the author. Perhaps re-read the post that explains what this actually does, it does not just up-vote (and even if it did, it would still annoy the hell out of me). Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 20:21
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    @cafce25 you're conflating thanking with upvoting. The premise of the experiment is to reduce the thanking by writing a comment that says "thanks". Are there really that many questions that get a "thanks" comment? I do agree good questions deserve an upvote. It's just really bizarre to me to think of this as "thanking" the question. If I upvote, I'm mostly thinking that the question is worth seeing by more people. Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 20:21
  • If we get a fix for 1. thanking on questions might as well stay for consistency. And yes I've seen questions that made me want to thank the author, for example a long overdue dupe target for common beginner questions written better than a beginner could have written it. Commented Feb 13, 2025 at 20:28
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    I cannot upvote this enough. The experiment running on questions is absolutely brainless. They mention stats for deleted "thanks" comments but fail to note the post type entirely. Commented Feb 14, 2025 at 5:49
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    All of this could be easily solved by just showing the nanny-comment dialog to users with less than 1000, or 5000 (whatever) rep. That would prevent upsetting long-time users by making the UI more cumbersome. Actually seems like a thought-out way to implement it? Commented Feb 17, 2025 at 4:15
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    Came here to say basically this. Ironically, there was no annoying popup that allowed me to easily thank you for posting my exact thoughts, Commented Feb 20, 2025 at 8:51
  • "Is that really expected to be a common use case?" kind of Commented Feb 25, 2025 at 5:36
  • We don't need "say thanks" cluttering the comments. I always remove them as 'no longer needed' and will continue doing so. Commented Mar 3, 2025 at 13:25
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Bugs/other irritations aside... this experiment is flawed.

We're taking an existing streamlined process that has no real barriers and adding speed bumps to it, then testing whether or not the speed bumps are slowing people down. It's obvious this will slow down the number of comments being posted, which will slow down the number of thanks comments being posted, which will slow down the number of thanks comments that are flagged, but we're forgetting to consider whether or not this is a good user experience to begin with. None of the stated metrics can even approach this question.

Have we considered that, maybe, just maybe, people who are misusing comments are looking for a missing feature that would better serve the feedback they wish to give?

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You do realise that you're making my SO life pretty miserable with these recent changes? I've voted almost 6k times but that apparently wasn't enough, so I need a giant "Vote" prompt right next to the text I'm trying to read.

I couldn't even say how many comments I've made without SEDE (and I cba at this point) but it was a huge point of my interaction with the site. So many posts on the Python tag can be closed in a comment and those questions couldn't generate an answer that's useful for posterity, even if officially answered. I VTC where I can, otherwise these questions will generally fade into obscurity.

"Comment with a clarification" doesn't even make sense linguistically. I'm not clarifying anything about the post - I'm asking a question for clarification or just closing the post down with a simple answer.

Have you considered that users like me (and far more prolific users) spend time for free to power this business and you're just throwing hurdles at us? The more prolific you are on the site, the harder these hurdles hit and the more it's wasting our time?

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  • Hum, "cba" apparently means "Can't be arsed (= bothered)"... (Sorry I didn't know and had to search for it...) Commented Feb 19, 2025 at 13:18
  • "I couldn't even say how many comments I've made" 12 576. At least the non-deleted ones. Commented Feb 19, 2025 at 13:20
  • @VLAZ ah, I missed the rearrangement of the UI. I don't think it changes my message but thanks for showing me that Commented Feb 19, 2025 at 13:26
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    @roganjosh just wanted to support your claim that you probably don't need an explanation how comments work. Commented Feb 19, 2025 at 13:29
  • @chivracq indeed it does. I didn't realise that I didn't need to write a query out, which I couldn't be bothered to do to find the answer. That has now been clarified. Next on your list of acronyms should be "That's sweet FA to do with me" being "F*** All" :) Commented Feb 19, 2025 at 13:51
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    Re acronyms, well..., thanks actually for using this 'cba' one and making me search for it instead of asking in a Comment, as from that acronyms lexicon page/site I linked to, I "finally" got the meaning of "iirc" that I've seen being used very regularly on 'Meta' and 'Chat' and never dared to ask what it exactly meant... Now I finally know, ah-ah...! Commented Feb 19, 2025 at 14:18
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The 'Show 1 more comment' button wraps to the next line;

enter image description here

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  • Looks like this should be fixed now, per @Connell's edit. Commented Feb 22, 2025 at 22:01
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    Seems like it's not fixed properly: i.sstatic.net/5NDpQTHO.png Commented Mar 5, 2025 at 13:33
  • Looks like it's been reported separately here, and Connell confirms in the comments that a fix is in the works. Commented Mar 5, 2025 at 18:00
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This commenting experiment broke mod tools.

It is impossible to add comment directly on the mod page (Moderator tools -> Flags, for instance under answer I am going to delete), and I need to open the Q/A in separate window and add comment there going through new comment popup.

Also, adding comments anywhere with this feature is extremely annoying, not only to moderators, but also to other high reputation users and curators.

Please remove this feature for moderators and high reputation users. It serves no purpose for them.

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    We've removed the dropdown from here too now, so this should be fixed. Commented Feb 21, 2025 at 13:11
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    @Connell Thanks. It is fixed in mod tooling. Commented Feb 21, 2025 at 15:01
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This UI is only useful for the first time someone uses the site. It's completely useless for those of us who have been using Stack Overflow and others for 15 years.

Please, make this nonsense stop. Stop breaking everything. You keep making things worse, not better.

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If the goal is to reduce the number of "thanks" comments, this doesn't seem like the best solution. I want to outline two alternatives, which would both avoid a negative impact on everyone who is using comments properly. I wonder if you have already considered them?

Alternative #1: a separate UI element

You could add a separate UI element, next to the "Add a comment" element, labelled "Thanks!".

That way, users who want to thank the poster can click "Thanks!", and there would be no need to insert a pop-up menu for everyone else who uses "Add a comment". This would avoid having any negative impact on people who using comments correctly.

Alternative #2: auto-detecting and blocking "thanks" comments

An alternative design is to keep the old UI for posting comments, without changes. When people post comments, auto-detect "thanks" comments and decline to post them. If you detect a "thanks" comment, block it and instead show a message to the user recommending they upvote instead, or pointing them to the "Thanks!" UI element for offering thanks. That would avoid negatively impacting people who are using comments properly.

Auto-detecting "thanks" comments sounds like an ideal application for a ML classifier (don't shoot me, please hear me out). I expect it should be straightforward to fine-tune a small language model (Llama 7B? Flan-T5? RoBERTa?) on a training set of "thanks" comments and non-"thanks" comments and obtain a classifier that can detect "thanks" comments. It would need empirical testing, but I'm guessing that setting a threshold on the softmax output from the language model should allow to control the false positive rate to a very low value. Even if you only detect 50% of "thanks" comments, the opportunity to teach users that such comments are inappropriate here might be sufficient to change user behavior.

Have you considered this alternative?

Last words

Ultimately, I'm not sure that "thanks" comments are the greatest priority or the largest problem that needs fixing. My impression is that there are bigger problems, e.g.,

  • Posters who are putting clarifications in the comments instead of editing their question/answer;

  • Old requests for clarification that are no longer needed because they have been addressed by editing the question;

  • Responses to old comments that have been deleted or can be deleted;

  • Comments that ask new questions.

Have you considered focusing effort first on the biggest problems, or at least the subset of biggest problems that can plausibly be addressed? I'm concerned that dealing with "Thanks" comments is a relatively small part of the issues with comments, and if it has a detrimental effect on users who are following the rules, the benefits might not be worth the cost.

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    good points and I agree, but their goal isn't just to reduce the number of "thanks" comments. it's also (IIUC) to provide an alternative outlet for expressing that, for which I'd rather see anonymous upvotes be made more valuable to the (logged-in) user. Commented Feb 18, 2025 at 19:16
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    I like both of these ideas. Together, they might prompt users to use the Thanks feature, while also reducing "thanks" comments, all without adding that extra click to comment. Maybe we could test Alternative #2 with minimal effort too (e.g. basic string match before trying ML). Thanks for your suggestions! Commented Feb 21, 2025 at 13:24

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