Comment section changed
Dear Yahoo,
Something has changed in your comment section that is very frustrating and I know I am not the only one. Recently it seems that your algorithm has changed so that only highly commented or rated comments get seen and rated. I have noticed that if I submit a comment, leave and then come back ten minutes later to search for my comment, that comment has dropped dramatically in the stack without a thumbs up or down, just like all the comments above and below mine. So it seems that Yahoo wants to be seen as hosting popular conversations based on the top five or six rated comments.
Also, sometimes a comment gets flagged for secondary approval. In the past two weeks I have had several comments flagged as "waiting for approval". But that approval never happens, ever. A month ago, when a comment got flagged, approval or rejection would happen routinely within an hour, sometimes in a matter of minutes depending on the time of day.
The algorithm used to decide if a comment can be posted or rejected obviously looks for certain words. But the algorithm doesn't take the context of the article into consideration. Take for example, just a while ago was a story about abortion and a woman who got pregnant due to *. In that case the use of the word * is pretty significant in the comment to be posted. My comment was talking about the statistics of pregnancy due to ****, but it was flagged for approval. The fact that Yahoo doesn't seem to be caring if comments actually get approved or rejected is extremely frustrating.
Yahoo is my homepage, but it doesn't have to be going forward. If I am making this feedback, you can be sure others are feeling the frustration as well. Please take a look at the comment statistics, I think you will see a reduction in the posting volume. Thank you
