d@vid's humble suggestions on commenting
signed bullet protocol
- rather than comment in the thick of a paragraph, comment below a section or blog entry (i.e. immediately above the horizontal rule)
- corollary: use horizontal rules!
- use bullets for clarity
- sign off with your name and the date, including month in text ("September", "Sep") and the year
- dates: with heavy conversations, consider mentioning the date only once per day (i.e. first person to comment on one day adds date) - in some contexts mentioning the time (only) will be more useful
- outside the context of blogs, which historically always allow for comments, create a "Comments" section if you add comments
- corollary: create one in advance if you want comments
in blogs
- use major changes, but make it clear in the summary that you've made a comment ("comment: witty comeback")
- if you don't others to render comments as major changes, make it clear (afaik LothrielPixie is the only blogger with this policy)
- avoid making comments on old entries, rather reference that entry from the newest one ("on August 9 you said...")
shangrila
- specifically on the blog comment front, by upgrading to a blog-handling wiki, or with a separate blog engine, these problems will solve themselves
Discussion
- other comments on making wiki communication clearer? enter em here - possibly "discussion" pages/sections shouldn't be rendered as bulleted comments but rule-separated entries? - d@vid August 18 2004
- This all seems rather Draconian. My policy to commenting is comment how you feel, so long as it makes sense and doesn't detract from the page. I also think that inline commenting makes more sense than commenting at the end of a page. Means ppl don't have to scroll up to see what you're commenting on. However, all inline comments should be in italics to differentiate from the main body, and all comments (no matter where they are) should be signed, unless you are deliberately not standing behind whatever comment you are making, for whatever lame reason. Oh, and I also don't really feel that dates are strictly necessary. If you reeeeeally want to know the date, you can check out the revision history, and for most applications, comment order is what's important, not date. -- SynKronos
- Yeah, I agree with SynKronos - ShadowsLight
- dragons: my intention was to suggest a protocol, not impose it - this is a wiki, after all - consider it a guide to how I structure my own comments, which can be adapted or ignored - naturally I think it is both logical and aesthetic
- inline: my problem with inline commenting is that it reads as an interruption, in which case you should just be editing - this is a wiki, after all ^v^ - it's also harder to find an inline comment, or contextualise it (see time signature)
- italics: I think this is a matter of preference in delineating a comment; I'll stick to bullets
- time signature: hey, I may not know anything about dates but I do use forums a lot, and it always helps to be able to place a conversation in real time (there's a difference between adding a comment, and adding a comment one year later) - having the date right there is useful (although I must say repeating the date each time does look funny... maybe the date only needs to be stated once per day? I've added that suggestion in)
- I think I basically differentiate between actual editing and restructuring (which doesn't happen a lot on this wiki), which is well supported by RecentChanges/Edits, and commenting rather than editing (which is happens all the time on this wiki) - d@vid August 19 2004