Have a hug

Blog comments (not that I get any here), much like discussions on forums and mailing lists, can very easily turn into shouting matches over the smallest of details or misunderstandings. It's nice to see, therefore, a site that takes a little unexpected step to calm people down in the instant before they start typing. Particletree's comment box (for their features) has a ready-typed sentence that I imagine must work rather well at cheering people up just as they're starting to write their comment. You don't expect to find anything other than something along the lines of 'comment goes here' in message boxes for comment forms, but Particletree decided to go with: Just imagine - you're about to launch into your vitriolic stance on the scientific merits of a usability test that looks a bit suspect, you scroll madly down to the comment box and are confronted with the form telling you to give everyone a hug. Clearly this won't work for everyone (or perhaps even for most people), but I bet it'd reduce 'flaming' a fair bit, at least for a while before people became immune to the message (at which point you'd have to get creative and start changing it regularly with ever more witty and unexpected niceties). I wasn't even in a bad mood when I found it (or about to post a comment as it happens), but it still struck me and gave me cause for a little internal chuckle.