How Featured Comments Work

Hello, this is your least favourite most frequent featured comment winner ToPhu! I'm here to explain how GoComics process comments, and how actions affect a comment (except for flagging—I'm not a GC insider or something like that.)

Don't ask me how I know this.

Section 1.1 | Featured Comment
The comment you see in the comment section first before you click Read More, decided by the amount of replies

Section 1.2 | Reply
A reply is a comment given to respond to another comment

Section 1.3 | Like/Heart
Shows that you like the comment

Section 2.1 | First Comment
Basically, when GC uploads a comic strip from the author, it processes the first comment in the comment section as the featured comment, and that is why getting first comment is so crucial to featured comment farming. As time goes on, however, more and more comments will soon arrive, and more and more replies will come, too.

Section 2.2 | Reply system
At this point, GC will find the comment with the most replies for featured comment, probably because GC wants you to know that the comment is very logical and recieves a lot of feedback. (So much for that.) My initial thought for GC's featured comment system was that they add the amounts of likes and replies on a comment to be featured, but through experience, likes are meaningless.

Section 2.3 | Tiebreaker
At some points, a featured comment and a normal comment will have the same amount of replies, and this normally happens when the strip is just uploaded. When this happens, my initial thought was that they count the amount of likes and nominates the comment with the higher amount of likes, but as I have said, likes are meaningless in featured comments, so that couldn't have been it. After some careful examinations, I have concluded that in order to break the tie, GC will repeat Section 2.1 and find the comment commented earlier than the rest, and GC will feature the comment.

Section 2.4 | Exceptions
There are one exception to the GC system which I found, and this exception will be featured comment no matter how many comments are earlier, and no matter how many comments have more reply. The exception, is indeed, the creator's comment. I haven't got a clue why GC implemented this, but my guess is that the creator will be trying to explain some newer features and techniques in the comic which is important to actually understand the strip. Of course, this is only my guess. Another exception is that if none of the comments have replies, the featured comment will go to whichever comment is the newest.(But most creator comments get more replies anyway).