YouTube streamlines comment management with new tool

 

YouTube's new comment management page.

(Credit: YouTube)
YouTube is continuing to iron out its new commenting system. The latest feature, which was launched Monday, is a comment management page that lets users organize comments all in one place.
Initially, users could manage comments from their YouTube Inbox, but when the company overhauled its comment system last fall, this setup was replaced with comment alerts. However, that feature was unpopular with users, so the company came up with the new comment management page -- which is essentially like the old Inbox system.
"Staying connected with your audience is critical on YouTube, so we fast-tracked the development of a new comment management page that lets you see, respond to and moderate your comments all in one place," YouTube engineer Patrick Doyle wrote in a blog post. "From this central page you can easily remove comments, flag comments for spam or abuse, give a thumbs up, or click over to the video watch page and reply."

YouTube comment sections are notorious as being dismal corners of the Internet, where anonymous posters can disparage and defame anyone or anything they find. This is likely one of the reasons, the company changed to its cleaner comment system in November. The new system now sorts comments so that users will see prioritized posts based on community-focused commenters and people in their Google+ circles. Before the change-over, YouTube comments were simply sorted by the most recent post.
YouTube said that the comment-management page will continue to be updated with more features like inline replying and expanding all replies.