[thelist] Community commenting question

Daniel J. Cody djc at members.evolt.org
Mon Feb 11 13:46:01 CST 2002


heya peter :)

Peter Van Dijck wrote:
> Here's a question for you community gurus:
> I added commenting on pages to a site of mine (example:
> http://poorbuthappy.com/colombia/about/123). But I notice people use it not
> for commenting but for chatting, asking questions, ... Basically, everything
> the discussion forum is for (that's already there).

heh. common problem, trust me. one way to deal with this might be to
preface the comment form with a paragraph or two explaining what that
particular section is to be used for, and where to go if you want to
chat/ask questions/etc.

we had this exact same problem for some time with the evolt site. people
were using the article submission page on www.evolt.org to ask
questions, give feedback on the site, or wanting help which could better
have been given on thelist or another forum. if you go to the submission
page now, http://evolt.org/article/index.html?action=submit you'll
notice we laid out very clearly what that form was to be used for and
provided links to the other areas of evolt which they may have been
looking for in the first place.

{snip}

> So I'm having problems communicating the concept here: do I change the
> concept, or how can I communicate it more clearly? (The concept by the way
> is that they can comment on the article: so that comments directly related
> to the article show up with it... this is good for other people reading the
> article...)
> Any tips?

I'd always recommend better communication and explanation as the first
steps to solving a problem like this. if or when that doesn't work, then
you can take a look at dealing with the problem in a different way :)

hope that helps, shout if you have any more questions :)

.djc.






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