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I couldn't agree more - Dzone is really great but getting people to comment more would be really valuable, and subtle changes, as Steve points out, could make substantial increases to the volume.

I'd have to put comments a distant second place for me, behind having to click twice to get to the content, come on folks, make it faster for me to get to the meat of the content, rather than putting in that second step.

I was only suggesting it for votes but it's a fair point. I figured people who actually vote were showing an escalated level of commitment so the extra step wouldn't be too bad.

Amen to more commenting. I don't care if you comment when you vote up, but please share your feedback when compelled to vote down.

Yup need more comments, am all for it

I'd also like to have the option to be notified by email or RSS when comments on specific posts are added.

I could not agree more! Especially for those who vote down a link. Positive feedback is good, but when someone votes something down I really want to know why. There is a big difference between 1) I voted this down because, This post is incorrect and the code does not actually show how to make proper rounded corners; 2) I voted this down because I don't need to see another article on how to make CSS rounded corners; and 3) I voted this down because I am not a web developer and I could care less about rounded corners.

P.S. There are too many posts about CSS rounded corners :)

Agreed!

Indeed, comments are good. Down voters, IMHO, should be strongly encouraged to comment on why they voted down.

Well, often when I have a comment about a particular post I'll prefer to comment on the blog itself as I feel the author is more likely to read it there (I'll make an exception here of course).
And there is a danger if comments receive more focus that this will become more and more like /. where the comments become the story and the article is rarely (if ever) read by most posters.

Maybe dzone could display an rss feed of the comments on the original blog post and/or provide an interface for posting comments to the original post from the dzone entry interface.

I think Nick Brown has a really valid point - I've often stated that the current world of blogs is heavily fractured - if you compare it to newsgroups of 10+ years ago there was a canonical place for discussions to occur - now who knows where the real discussion is happening - on your blog - on reddit - on slashdot - on dzone? This is a fundamental problem that is not entirely particular to DZone.

But the OPs point is DZone could do some simple adjustements to encourage users to comment and not be obnoxious about it. I think at least if you have a mindset like Nick, you could comment on why you voted, but leave your comments about the article in the article. That would be a start anyway.
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