“how can we assume that the authors or the publishers always expect and appreciate in-depth discussion and comments on their articles?” – This is a valid point. I don’t have any examples, because I don’t really come across this behavior too often. But if this is really how an author felt I’d like to ask them why they are writing at all. What is the point?

“Perhaps, they only care that they get good reviews and feedbacks from their readers?” – I think, especially in the technical community, the quality of an article reigns supreme. The higher the quality, the more likely readers will want to contribute their thoughts. This discussion will likely fuel more visitors, more discussion, and more likes/up-votes. I’ve seen plenty of scenarios where a comment on an article brought the article more ratings. At this point, if the author chooses to sit out its up to them. I think it would be a big mistake for the author not to participate, but its not necessarily required.

Its always smart to tailor your content to your audience. If the author intends to get high ratings they are going to write slightly different then they would for another audience. Unfortunately, the tech crowd really seems to embrace buzzwords, etc (see Digg). But if you look in the right places the articles that are rated higher are of a higher caliber (see Reddit).

Again, what is the end goal from getting high ratings? If something gets highly rated people *will* come. People coming means there will be different viewpoints and different opinions that inevitably they will want to share. If not with the author then with others (3rd party sites). To me, high ratings and discussion seem inseparable.

To address your second point. A thumbs up is the simplest form of praise. Its like Facebook’s “like” feature. It does so in a nice simple way. I’m aware my current blog system isn’t ideal and I’m okay with that (for now).

The choice to leave a comment is always up to the commenter. For me it depends on numerous variables such as time, willingness, privacy, concern, questions, expected responses, feelings (emotion), etc. Sometimes you just feel compelled to give a comment, and everyone is better for it. The best example I can come up with is this recent article. A student blogs about a teacher’s assignment, and the teacher actually responds with a comment (apparently its unusual for him to do so):
http://blog.thetonk.com/archives/dont-be-lazy-dont-use-eval

Your final idea has some good and some bad. The problem I see with most rating systems is that someone can downvote what someone else upvotes. Some systems have simply moved to upvotes and I think they are better for it. When its only upvotes then users have the ability to filter what they see based on a minimum vote level. Trends tend to converge better. Your idea to let the authors control how they get feedback is brilliant and really opens some neat doors.

Its funny to think that as long as they have been around, commenting systems still have so many problems.

First, how can we assume that the authors or the publishers always expect and appreciate in-depth discussion and comments on their articles? Perhaps, they only care that they get good reviews and feedbacks from their readers? In this case, wouldn’t authors care more about the ratings on their articles in formats such as “like or dislike” or “thumbs up or thumbs down” or the number of stars?

Second, most of us are “readers” and not “authors”. As a reader/commenter, after reading an article or a blog, I might not have a lot of things to say or don’t really care to say. When I read your article, I liked the article enough and knew you enough to write probably “unnecessarily” lengthy comment. ;-) But if you weren’t the author of the article, I might just agree and move on to a next article unless there was a way for me to give you a quick feedback like “thumbs up”.

So, this got me thinking some more between the diaper changing time…If the comment system is built so that it allows the authors and publishers to design how they get their feedbacks from their users? For example, if they want their readers to leave any comment, the comment has to be of a certain length? In a similar context, can the comment system allow the “readers” filter the comments of the article? For example, if I want to read only the comments that have a certain rating and content size greater than 1k?

Little David is crying now, so I’d better go. Thumbs up, Joe!

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Learning from StackOverflow.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ