The Evolving Newsroom

A couple of observations on two comment apps that I'm finding useful.

1. I sometimes bounce around commenting on various sites then forget who or where they are, which means I can't check back later to find out how the conversation's progressing.

Some blog sites have an option to receive an email whenever a new comment is added to the thread, but most don't.

Enter Backtype, which showed up in a Google alert a couple of weeks ago and looks promising. Backtype aggregates comments and lets you find yours either by searching against your username or whatever blog/website you include in comment registration forms.

















If I type in my username I get a list of all the comments I've made where I've included Evolving Newsroom in the registration form.
Alternatively I can point my browser to http://www.backtype.com/url/evolvingnewsroom.blogspot.com to see the same list. Replace the evolvingnewsroom.blogspot.com part with another blog url and you should see their list.

It's a nice way to keep track of your own conversations and those on blogs of interest. Also good for getting a sense of where someone else is at (maybe someone trying to pitch you a story) - if you have a username you can see what someone's been saying, where and how often.

You can follow other users - the usual crowd are there, Jeff Jarvis, Fred Wilson, Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Tim O'Reilly, Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus - and there's a public timeline of comments that you can browse.

You can also set up alerts similar to Google alerts. Type in the words you want Backtype to watch and it will send you an email as often as you specify listing comments that feature those words - useful for reputation management or keeping track of a news round.



















2. Adding Disqus to my blog has been a big help. Disqus adds a simple comment form (like those you see on Wordpress blogs) at the bottom of each blog post.

You get to choose what the form looks like, whether it includes avatars, enable or disable trackbacks and Seesmic video replies etc. And you can add a Recent Comments widget to a side bar. I found it much easier to manage all this with Disqus than with the Blogger system.

When a comment is made Disqus emails you with the comment and the option to reply to it by return email - which means you don't have to visit the site to hit the publish button.

Over to you whether you want to moderate comments before they're published or after, but Disqus has a nice little moderation app that lets you read just your comments or all comments on your blog, and mark any as spam, delete or jump to see them on the page.

The built-in spam filter seems to work pretty well - anything Disqus regards as spam is put on hold and an email sent so you can decide whether to delete it or publish it. I've had one spam comment slip through but the rest have been caught.

All in all, I like it.

UK blogger Martin Belam has been running a series on making the most of comments on blogs. It's quite wide-ranging and I'm finding it useful (especially in reinforcing my intention to move on from Blogger at some stage to a platform with more functionality).

In this post he talks about how to engage with people commenting on blogs:

"If people have taken the time to leave comments on your blog, then join in as
well... If people ask you a question, take the time answer it.

"Increasingly publishing platforms enable bloggers to set up a different look and feel for comments left by the author of a post. I'm a fan of this idea, as I think it helps to highlight when an author is engaged with the audience response to the content they are publishing.

"You've much more chance of getting an answer and continuing a conversation if
you also approach the person directly. If the person has left an email address
alongside their comment, I will also take the time to drop them a short polite
email."

He also looks at moderation, using RSS for comments, using comments to manage complaints and more. Worth a read if, like me, you're a relative newcomer to blogging and want to develop a more conversational style.

Anyone writing a moderation policy for a news website - and there must be a few of you doing just that at the moment - might want to check out BoingBoing moderator Teresa Neilsen Hayden's Q&A on their moderation policy.

Moderation is the business of checking comments submitted by website users to make sure they're not defamatory, inciting hatred or racism, off topic or obscene. It's increasingly going to become part of everyday life in newsrooms as websites expand and community content - comments, user stories, images, blogs and so on - is beefed up.

The BoingBoing moderators' Q&A strikes me as a great example of writing clear guidelines in a way that works for your audience - light years ahead of those nasty legalese Terms and Conditions that some news sites are still using.

Not only did it make me laugh (always welcome on a Wednesday afternoon) but it taught me a lot without making it feel like I was learning anything.

Favourite new word: disemvowelling.

Q. All the vowels have disappeared from a paragraph I wrote! What's going on?

A. We did it. Someone (a moderator, one of the Boingers) was expressing displeasure at your remarks. The technique is called disemvowelling. It deprecates but does not delete the remark. With work, the disemvowelled text should still be readable.

Favourite quote of the day:

"Life is an unending series of auditions. Get used to it."

On why moderators are necessary:

Q. Why does Boing Boing have to have a moderator?

A. First answer: Because every general-interest online forum that's worth reading has some kind of moderation system in force.

Second answer: Because four years ago, Boing Boing's first, unmoderated comment system went so septic that it had to be shut down. The Boingers want to never go through that again.

On courtesy:

Q. I thought I was being reasonably polite when I got into an argument with Bonzo, but two of my comments got removed entirely, and he just had a couple of paragraphs disemvowelled. Why me? Why not him?

A. There are many possibilities. The biggest one is that you were insufficiently polite. In the heat of an argument, your own remarks are going to seem more justifiable, and Bonzo's arguments are going to seem shabbier and more malicious. This temporary distortion is best addressed by being more polite than you think should be necessary.

On people who comment only on how bored they are:

Q. It's obvious that you won't tolerate anything but supportive comments from brown-nosers and yes-men--right?

A. I'll venture a guess that you responded to a new entry on Boing Boing by announcing that it was hopelessly lame and boring, and then came back later to discover that your comment had disappeared.

Q. Yes! Why did you remove it?

A. This is another one of those questions that has multiple answers.

First: you didn't explain why it bored you. Without an explanation, announcing that you're bored is neither useful or entertaining. Also, it's a real bringdown for readers who lack confidence in their own opinions.

Second: because frequently the "I'm so bored" thing is just attitudinizing. There's a whole big internet out there, and it's full of people who, if they don't like what they're currently reading, move on and read something else. They don't post about how bored they are just to have something to say.

You may need different rules and tone than BoingBoing, of course, but it's not a bad starting point.