Shaun Low

Embedded comments, and star ratings

Google’s Blogger has a couple of new features available at the special Blogger Draft site. Among these changes are:

• Star ratings: Let your visitors vote from one to five stars. You will then be able to see the average rating for a particular post. You can find this feature at your Layouts page; click Edit at your Blog Posts element, and check the Show Star Ratings box.
• The ability to put the comments form embedded below the post. Blogger’s old comments functionality had very low usability for a couple of reasons; one of them was that it took you to a separate layout when you wanted to comment. To enable this change bringing better integration, switch to Settings -> Comments, and in the Comment Form Placement segment check the “Embedded below post” box. Click Save Settings to approve. Who would’ve thought the day would come…
• Integration into Google Webmaster tools. You can now follow a dashboard link reading Webmaster Tools. Automatically, all your Blogspot blogs will be added to the tools suite, though they still remain to be verified. With Google webmaster tools, you can utilize statistic information and diagnostics, for instance.
• Exporting and importing your blog. Google announced you can now export all of your blog posts into a single (Atom-formatted) XML file to allow for a backup… or perhaps, to allow to move to another blogging system, or do something else with the data. Reversely, you can also import that file back into your system. To give this a try switch to the Settings page for your blog; you’ll find the links “Import blog” and “Export blog” on top. Exporting will trigger a download named e.g. “blog-06-27-2008.xml” (this might fare better with the ISO date format yyyy-mm-dd).
• A new post editor. The new post editor has a different image handling. Google says, “When you upload an image to the new post editor it will appear as a thumbnail in the image dialog box. That way, you can upload several images at once, and then add them into your post at your convenience.” Also, the HTML editing mode saw a couple of improvements; <br>eaks won’t be added automatically, and there will be a clearer formatting with new lines for generated HTML.

These features are also further detailed in the Blogger in Draft blog. If you don’t want to always visit the special draft.blogger.com URL, you can now also make the Draft mode your default mode; look for the checkbox reading “Make Blogger in Draft my default dashboard” at the top of your dashboard.

[Thanks DPic and Mrrix32!]

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About the author:
Philipp Lenssen from Germany, author of 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google, shares his views & news on the search industry in the daily Google Blogoscoped.

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Question: I’m running a weblog for my company and we have some people from the business community who are adding comments after our blog entries, which is great. Other people who we don’t know put in incorrect or off topic remarks and I want to just delete them, but I’m not sure whether that’s okay or not. Specifically, isn’t it censorship if I delete the remarks people leave on our site?

Dave’s Answer:

Let’s start by defining our terms. Here’s a simple definition of censorship for us to work with: “The practice of suppressing a text or part of a text that is considered objectionable according to certain standards.”

If you host a party at your office and someone comes in off the street, spouting obscenities and saying comments that are patently offensive to the rest of the participants, should you ask that person to leave? Of course you should. That’s because they’re violating the standards of behavior expected of people at a business party or other social event. Of course, those standards are going to vary based on the group too, so a clique of rough and tumble bikers or street gang members is going to have a very different set of behavioral standards than the symphony society tea, but in both cases, there is a definite expectation of acceptable behavior.

When we turn to the written word, be it online or physical documents, there are similar standards, similar expectations of behavior and discorse, and if those standards are violated, there’s no reason that those comments or letters should be published or retained.

Ah, but what about freedom of speech, which is defined as “the concept of the inherent human right to voice one’s opinion publicly without fear of censorship or punishment.” That’s critically important too, but there’s a contextual element to this freedom that is often forgotten. The Constitution actually says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” It’s about laws restricting this freedom, the amendment to the Constitution isn’t about the freedom to say anything at any time or place. That’s actually restricted by libel and slander laws, among other things.

Your weblog is a private publication, as is the Boulder Daily Camera, my hometown newspaper, and while it may serve the public good, there’s no law, no legal nor moral obligation that every terrible, crude, rude, offensive or hostile comment left need be retained.

It’s okay to delete comments that are in violation of your site’s standards of conduct, whether stated explicitly or not.

The Daily Camera has just such a standard of conduct defined too, summarized as “You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy.” Post something like that and odds are very good that it’ll be promptly deleted.

To learn more about how the paper applies this guideline, I asked online editor Jennifer Falor how they determine whether a given comment is over the line or not. Here’s what she said: “We don’t actively monitor the comments. Users flag comments they believe break the User Agreement and that sends an e-mail to city editor Matt Sebastian and I. We quickly look at the comment and then have to make a decision whether to delete it or not. Usually it’s cut and dry.”

That’s for the easy stuff. What about the less obvious comments that one person might find offensive but others might think is an important voice or perspective to hold in the debate? Jennifer: “Some comments are more difficult. Users post things that I personally believe are inappropriate, insensitive or disgusting. However, as long as they’re not explicitly breaking one of the rules, we really can’t justify deleting the comment.”

Finally, she’ll get opinions from other members of the Camera staff, and “if we both come to the same decision, it’s an easy call. If we don’t agree, we usually err on leaving the comment up.”

Is it censorship? Is the Daily Camera violating the constitutional freedoms of the online community by managing the comments left on the site and deleting those that are considered inappropriate or in violation of the user agreement? Jennifer explains “I do not believe that it’s censorship when we delete comments. We are a private business and can make decisions about what kinds of content we want displayed on our Web site.”

So there you have it. I manage the content on my weblogs closely to ensure that the discourse remains high quality, and with a different mechanism and are more careful approach, the Daily Camera does exactly the same thing. I suggest to you that it’s not only acceptable but critical that you do the same with the comments left on your company’s weblog too.

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About the author:
Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is
internationally known as an expert on both business and technology issues.
Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four
startups, he also runs a strategic marketing company and consults with firms
seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave
is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast
programs.

AskDaveTaylor.com
http://www.intuitive.com/blog/

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I think the hardest thing for a blogger is the moment that the initial newness and excitement wears off. You are faced with what is perhaps one of the hardest realizations: and that is, “I have to keep this going”.

As I have completed my first 100 blog posts on the Ignite blog, it is apparent that I’ve had ups and downs in blogging. There were some weeks where I would be on a roll and write a blog post daily, and yet other weeks when I breathed a sigh of relief that Jim or another Igniter posted something.

Surely, having a large of amount of client work has been one culprit to these inconsistencies, but quite often these were due to the difficulties of blogging itself. Many times I had come to a place where I thought, “I can’t think of anything to write about”, and felt the pain of scraping to find something else to write.

Last week, I finally read a blog post that put this feeling into writing, and if you are a blogger I highly suggest reading it. It was an article entitled, “Leaning into the Blogging Dip“, written by Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger, and was partly a review of Seth Godins book “The Dip“, combined with his own experiences as a blogger and his commitments to overcoming his struggles. In short, this article put a finger on exactly what I have felt as a blogger - while giving perhaps the best advice I’ve heard in how to deal with it.

His advice? You’ve got to lean into it. Don’t try to convince yourself you need a “blogging vacation”, or that you need to wait until you are “inspired”. Instead, he has shared the following promises he is going to use to push through his “blogging dips”:

* I need to write when I don’t think I’ve got anything new to say
* I’ve got to write when I’ve got too much to say.
* I’ve got to write when I learn something new so I can share it with my readers.
* I’ve got to write when I find something “old” that’s valuable and convince my readers that it’s worth examining.
* I’ve got to write when I feel confident and relaxed.
* I’ve got to write when every word that comes out seems like crap.
* And I’ve got to write during all of the times in between.

After reading these, I’ve decided to commit to this same philosophy, and will probably pick up a copy of Seth’s book to get even more inspired.

So here’s to 100 more posts, and pushing through the dips along the way!

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About the author:
As a Social Media Strategist for Ignite Social Media, Lisa McNeill outlines social media tactics and develops social media campaigns to help companies reach customers and build brand advocates. Her expertise in project management and marketing additionally guides the execution of these campaigns.

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I got several emails when I had published my new site design about how to style only the first post of the blog in Wordpress. This tactic can be handy to call out the very first post so that the readers attention is on the most recent topic for your blog. It is actually very easy, and may not be the best PHP in the world but it works perfectly.

Now the only problem with using this method is that you will have every first post on every index page styled this way. I haven’t played around with how to avoid that because that is the way I intended to design it. Perhaps someone has an idea on avoiding that if it is needed.

In your index.php file for your Wordpress theme you want to find your post container div (or whatever markup wraps your entire post). In the class area of this post you want to add a space after the first class (assuming you have a first class) and use the following PHP:

What this PHP will do is check to see if the variable $post is set with the string “set” and if it is not set with that string then it will echo out the class “firstPost” and then set the variable. Once the variable has been set each post afterwards will not echo out that class. Thereby creating a unique class for your first post that you can style however you want.

May be a little sloppy for the PHP gurus reading this— but it works.

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About the author:
Dustin Brewer is a web designer located in Oklahoma City, OK specializing in aesthetics in design, web standards, accessibility and usability. He also enjoys helping others to discover CSS and web design best practices through his web site, dustin brewer, a web design news site.

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