Luis 26 May 06

So what does it take for someone to get knighted?

Sammy 26 May 06

Luis,

I have it on very good authority that if you manage to post “FIRST!!!!!” before anyone else has responded, it improves your chances greatly.

Also, making a pun about Digg is a favorite among the judges.

Jon S 26 May 06

In looking at this icon and the troll cap icon I notice that they’re both yellow icons with a red callout. Might it be a good idea to change the color of the “Royalty” callout to green, or something other than red?

In scanning a page of comments I believe it would be easier to distinguish the two icons if they differed a bit more.

Rick 26 May 06

Any thought of creating a Serfs cap for all of us working class folk?

scott brooks 26 May 06

So now if you are a good do-bee you get a crown and bad do-bees get dunce caps ? ….

Now correct me if i am wrong ….are people are going to be hesitant to make real comments because of the social shame of having a 37singnalite announcing to the world that they are a dunce …..conversely are the good do-bee’s going to try even harder to say things to win them praise ?

I think we will see less people putting names in fear of being outed ….

but that’s just my 2 cents (1.89 cents usd)

cheers

Scott

Dave Simon 26 May 06

If you consider changing the color, the royalty one should be purple…

Mike Morton 26 May 06

I hadn’t noticed the troll cap yet. :/

Dave P 26 May 06

Could I ask a question: What is the objective to be achieved through the introduction of the Royalty Cap?

One would assume that the troll cap makes it easier for users to filter the s vs. n ratio when reading the comments. Moving forward to the “crown”, the only objective I can think of is to help promote more insightful comments.

But there’s a problem with this: Following Scott’s points above, I’m afraid this move may prompt a decline in comment standards, rather than an overall improvement. As people become focused on earning a “crown”, their comments would reflect this. Not only would commenter’s be more inclined to “ass-kiss” for the right to wear the crown, crowned comments are less likely to be argued against - regardless of their merit. Overall, the discussion quality is decreased.

The “crown” encourages group think, and will suffer from the same issues as other moderation systems such as those on Slashdot and digg, etc.

I thought what you were doing by having a weekly post was more than sufficient to encourage quality comments.

Eddie 26 May 06

Dave P should get to wear the crown for that comment.

Dave P 26 May 06

@ML:

We�re not going to give out crowns to people merely because they kiss ass. That�s boring. We�ll crown comments that are interesting, valuable, or thoughtful.

I wasn’t suggesting that you would; you guys have been pretty good with the troll cap, but my point is that you don’t have to, really. People now understand that a crown is a possibility - regardless of whether they actually earn one - so the number of quality comments will decrease, since the noise (brown-nosers, sudeo-smart comments etc) will increase.

Combine that with a drop (granted not a total one) in discussion concerning anointed comments and it further degrades the thread.

Your actions, crowning or not, have very little effect on the group dynamic.

And lots of people will prob make a point of arguing with crowned comments.

True enough, yet that’s not everyone. Some people will see crowned comments as representative of 37signals “sanction”, and hence keep their views to themselves.

I suppose my concerns come from the fact that this action doesn’t seem to really be in response to any particular issue, and doesn’t seem to provide any obvious benefit overall, aside from the ego boost.

From what I’ve seen over the years regarding the idea of comment moderation and such, (which this is a very light form of - now that you have three levels of comments) it seems to be a slippery slope, with “favoured” battling out with “non-favoured” over control. I certainly hope we don’t see the same type of things becoming standard here at SvN.

Jared White 26 May 06

I don’t want your stinking crown, you bunch of losers. Give me the troll crown; it’s much more nasty.

In my day, we didn’t have blog posts — in fact, we didn’t even have blogs. If you wanted to communicate with people, you’d have to find a half-burned stick and carve out a couple of words on a piece of tree bark. And we liked it, we loved it! And there was nothing you could do about it. You’d walk around writing cryptic pieces of nonsense nobody could read and get your hands all dirrrrrrty. Then you’d have to go wash them off in the stream, which was also dirrrrty because everyone else was washing half-burned stick ash off of their hands. And we liked, weeeee loved it! And there was nothing you could do about it!

Dave P 26 May 06

We�re just having fun, man.

Fair enough… I think you’re playing with fire is all I’m sayin’.

fu 26 May 06

OMG 37SIG ROXORS, EVRY1 ELSE SUXORS, PLZ GIMME DA CAP!!!!!!!111

Pete Kirkham 28 May 06

Do the royalty in your country actually make insightful comments? I’m from the UK, and we have to put up with Prince Charles’ well-intentioned but befuddled murmurings, or Prince Phillip’s incoherent bigotry.

Phil Hagelberg 28 May 06

I think it would be a lot simpler without the label underneath it. The icon says it all.

I would have thought you guys would have realized that, what with the whole “less” fascination here.

Daniel Lynch 31 May 06

Give it to me, baby poo.

Will Rogers 31 May 06

What’s with the differing image formats? The 64px version is a PNG, and the 32px version is a GIF. I noticed both sizes of Troll Cap are GIFs.

Not that it matters too much to me, really, I’m just curious.

Joel Mueller 01 Jun 06

Did you already have this a while back? Maybe it was someone else like Unsanity.