If you read the comments here often you might have noticed that when Ashley or myself submits a comment that it has a unique look to it. Earlier this week we were trying out a new star that was being placed in the corner of our comments and now it is your turn to get a star!
Maybe it sounds lame but we are trying to make it easy for new people who are visiting our site to recognize the commenter’s that spark great conversations. To pinpoint those people we are going to look at how frequently you comment. Right now you’ll need 50 comments but that number may increase as more people become “All-Stars”.
In order to receive the star pictured above you will have to register on our site. Once you register you’ll be able to keep track of the top commenter’s by selecting the “Manage” button located at the top of the sidebar. There you will also find the current list of All-Stars.
The top commenter’s are sorted by email address, so if you haven’t registered yet that doesn’t mean you have to start over. When registering make sure you enter in the same address that you have been using in the comment form. That will help ensure that the number of comments is carried over onto your account.
Here is what the comment count looks like right now:
- Inferno_str1ke (82)
- Max (81)
- natmaster (31)
- Keith L. Dick (31)
- Jason (30)
- Pieter De Decker (21)
- Ed West (16)
- mediaphile (12)
- PhoenixP3K (9)
- Alfredo (9)
So we have two people that are now considered All-Stars here and Inferno_str1ke’s comments will now reflect the change but Max still needs to register. We really appreciate everyone who takes the time to comment and we can’t wait to make more of you All-Stars! 
I like the idea.
PS: You could speak a little more about Opera (wich is a great browser).
Yes, good idea. You might want to make the comment count part of the user profile, so users can see how many comments they’ve posted so far.
I believe it is a decent idea and one that may help the community grow here.
Good Idea! I like it.
I have just registered. By the way I’m the “Alfredo” who commented before in posts like “How to join Yahoo Mail Beta” and some others too.
So this is my comment #10. YES!
Just registered.
Very good idea btw
Duh, why didn’t I think of that! I’ve added a “Stats” section on the profile page that tells you how many comments you have.
I am really glad everyone likes the idea
Yay, I get a star!
Nice idea to keep people commenting, and also add an incentive to register, and I’m happy to keep up the heavy commenting as long as the content stays at the same A standard
Great way to increase the comments.
But, how did you go about doing this?
Any plugin?
How are the number of comments tracked? By email address or name?
I am using a customized version of the [dev.wp-plugins.org] plug-in as well as several database queries. To find a list of the current top commenters I just use a SQL query that I came up with (I’m a SQL freak and love queries).
The comments are tracked by email address but I setup the Author Highlight plug-in to recognize a user’s ID number. That is why I require a user to be registered in order to receive their star. Otherwise anyone could comment with the same email address and have the star be displayed. Also, If I did it by email address then someone could also enter my email address in the field, tech@cybernetnews.com, and it would show that they are the author.
Just registered.
I like the idea with the stars. Now people would want to contribute to the discussions in the comments section more, because, you know, who wouldn’t want an awesome star?
Okay Max, I got you all updated as you can see. Unfortunately your previous posts won’t get the star because of the system I had to use.
The bad thing about this idea is that people may want to start writing nonsense just to improve their ranking. What about that?
Elephant wolf moo moo
I jest of course. The idea of spamming to boost a post count and thus one’s personal ego on a forum may be common practice, but as Ryan usually posts no more than 10 stories a day, and as commenting on them dies down a few days after posting it would be fairly easy for him just to delete any offending spammy posts, or even bust that user’s status back down to 0 again.
As you’re accepting ideas Ryan, how about pert of the user page allowing you to see a big list of links to all the articles you’ve commented on. It would be handy for when I need to find some info that I know someone gave me in a comment on an old blog item.
That is a good point and we have thought about that. We figured that most people won’t spam our site to receive a star since they get no extra “publicity” such as a link to their site on our homepage. The process is not an automatic one either. I have to manually approve each person so if someone comments 50 times in 10 minutes it won’t do any good until I have read through their comments.
That is a pretty good idea and I should be able to put that together.
I am curious: I never registered until this point, but you still have a record of my comments – will these be transfered to my new account?
If you always entered in an email address when you commented then it will carry over. If you registered with that same address then it will automatically pick up where you left off. After logging in you should be able to see how many comments you have made. It looks like you have 32 right now.
Sweet, I’ll have to get 20 or so more so I can get me a star!
*shamelessly posts useless comment to up count*
*ponders the implication of quantity (rather than quality rewards) for posting….*
This is my 100th post
I am now officially an All-Star 
! This really is a great site, Ryan, and don’t worry, I’ll keep on posting just as often as I used to.
Since I would feel a little guilty if I just posted a meaningless comment, I have a few suggestions. The personal comment count should be on the dashboard, and, instead of just commenting, an All-Star should have to send in a number of tips (that you actually use or at least recognize as very good) and participate in a number of polls. This would make the status of All-Star a little more special, and discourage bulk commenting.
I agree 100% that we should include tips and other things in the “count” so we are working on some sort of scheme/point system that will make it work. Also, I should have some time to throw the personal comment count on the dashboard this weekend. Thanks for the recommendation!
Ryan, why your website doesn’t grant “all-star” automatically?
It is very simple to make it automatic. (AFAIK, right now you do it manually.)
It would be really easy to grant all-stars automatically with how I have it setup, but I want to make sure that no one all of a sudden spams the site and gets promoted as an all-star.
You still can automate it. To check if the user is a spammer, your website just have to look at statistics:
If user posts all 125 comments per, for example, 24 hours, then it is probably spam bot. Then he should NOT get “all-star”, and an alert should be sent to webmaster (you or Ashley).
That would probably work…I didn’t think about checking the time period of the comments. Thanks for the idea!