I get aggravated at seeing these comments too, but I'm not surprised why they don't use the 'formalized' routes for sharing. Tagging someone in the comments is the path of least resistance, and people have acclimated to it—and at this point, it's hard to change because the incentive to change would be to keep a comments section clean, which people don't really care about.
I'd argue that, failing convincing people that it's annoying to do so or changing to the UI to lead people to the "share" function instead, the solution is to filter these kinds of comments out programmatically, showing them only to the sender and recipient(s).
You've got it right. If this is enough of an issue for enough people to make it worthwhile, programmatically filtering out those comments from the general view should be straightforward, and a hell of a lot easier than convincing everyone to behave differently.
Attempting to convince users to stop doing things the easy way is futile and a filter could be implemented conveniently. Give the users what they want, to be able to type a friend's name into the comment box to share. If their incentive is to be seen publicly sharing the link with their friend in that context (proudly putting friendship on display is essential for many FB users), it could be made visible only to those users' friends.
Maybe I've internalized too much agile propaganda, but to me it sounds crazy to assume that people's preferred way to use a product is wrong, especially when adjusting to fit their preferences is so easy.
I like your idea of filtering the and converting to a notification. It feels like a kind of "command line" comment section. I wonder what else you could enable using this idea. @saved @favorties @hackernews?
I think maybe you're touching on the real issue. The user is expressing metadata as content because it is easier than the going through the interface. This will probably be the case in any short-lived activity.
The proper response is not to tell users to stop. The proper response is to advance how we interpret user behavior.
Comments
I get aggravated at seeing these comments too, but I'm not surprised why they don't use the 'formalized' routes for sharing. Tagging someone in the comments is the path of least resistance, and people have acclimated to it—and at this point, it's hard to change because the incentive to change would be to keep a comments section clean, which people don't really care about.
I'd argue that, failing convincing people that it's annoying to do so or changing to the UI to lead people to the "share" function instead, the solution is to filter these kinds of comments out programmatically, showing them only to the sender and recipient(s).
You've got it right. If this is enough of an issue for enough people to make it worthwhile, programmatically filtering out those comments from the general view should be straightforward, and a hell of a lot easier than convincing everyone to behave differently.
Attempting to convince users to stop doing things the easy way is futile and a filter could be implemented conveniently. Give the users what they want, to be able to type a friend's name into the comment box to share. If their incentive is to be seen publicly sharing the link with their friend in that context (proudly putting friendship on display is essential for many FB users), it could be made visible only to those users' friends.
Maybe I've internalized too much agile propaganda, but to me it sounds crazy to assume that people's preferred way to use a product is wrong, especially when adjusting to fit their preferences is so easy.
I like your idea of filtering the and converting to a notification. It feels like a kind of "command line" comment section. I wonder what else you could enable using this idea. @saved @favorties @hackernews?
I think maybe you're touching on the real issue. The user is expressing metadata as content because it is easier than the going through the interface. This will probably be the case in any short-lived activity.
The proper response is not to tell users to stop. The proper response is to advance how we interpret user behavior.