Hola! We’re excited to launch the new Comments system – we’ve listened to your requests and feedback and have incorporated many of your suggestions. Some highlights include:

PRESENTATION

• Comments are much more lightweight. Some submissions get hundreds of comments, which used to require a lot of bandwidth to load and even more CPU to render. The display of each page of comments is now managed by a processing queue, which allows the pages to load quickly without hammering your browser with all of the discussions and replies at once. We hope this will allow for a solid balance between your desire to avoid loading replies via AJAX and our shared desire to avoid crashing your browser. Initially, to speed up the rendering time, only the first level of each discussion is shown, but you can easily choose to expand comment threads one at a time or all at once – and hey, no more waiting for replies to load when you open them!
• Increased transparency. Instead of showing only the total Digg count for each comment, you can now click the Digg count to see the total number of Diggs and buries for each comment.
• Improved timestamp. If a post is less than 24 hours old, the timestamp will be displayed in hours and minutes instead of just hours like it was before.

SORTING

• New sorting fields. We’ve added a new ‘Controversial’ sort that highlights comments with the most divergent ratings from Digg users. It’s also easier to see comments posted by you and your friends by selecting ‘Only Mine’ or ‘Only Friends’ when you’re logged in.
• New sort methods. When sorting by ‘Most Diggs’, comments are shown in order of Digg count regardless of the level of the comment. To make it easier to view each comment in the context of its discussion, we provide a link to view the original thread or to reply to that individual comment inline.

POSTING

• Change your vote. You can now change the up/down vote for any comment as much as you’d like. If you freak out and try to change it a bazillion times in a row, though, we’ll be forced to drop the rate hammer on you.
• More editing time. You now have five minutes to edit your comment, and we show a countdown indicating the time remaining to edit. You can also delete your comment during this time period.
• Increased text area. We’ve increased the font size, and the main text box will expand when you write a lot of text.

PREFERENCES

• New settings. When you’re logged in, you can now choose how many discussions to initially load as well as whether discussions should be collapsed or expanded by default. We also broke out the option to filter comments below a particular Digg count, so you can tweak it independent of your other settings. Due to this change you’ll have to redo your settings. But hey, that’s a small price to pay for a new Comments system, right?

Thanks for all of your feedback– you’ll see most of your suggestions implemented in the new Comments system. As always, we’re looking to you for your thoughts on how you want Comments to work, so keep sending us your ideas & suggestions!

- Micah

Hey all! Thanks for tuning in to our Digg Townhall on Tuesday night. Keep the feedback coming! If you missed it, you can catch the past Townhalls at digg.com/townhall.

Be sure to mark your calendar for a few upcoming events — Digg is coming to The Big Apple for Internet Week and we’re teaming up with Revision3 to throw a Digg Meet-up and live Diggnation on June 4th. Join us at Studio B in Brooklyn from 6pm-midnight to meet fellow Diggers and folks from the Digg team. There will also be a performance by Scam School’s Brian Brushwood, special guests and announcements. For a sneak peek into what to expect, check out some highlights from our first Digg Meet-up in San Francisco, below: