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The value of comments? Helping to get to grips with depression
Helen Lewis wrote an interesting post back in April about the value of comments on websites. In it, she equated a thread of comments to a Giant Lavatory Wall on the web and rightly asked what the...
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X Factor shows us how community could work on news websites
A few weeks ago, during a Times+ event to promote her new book (which you can wach in full here), Caitlin Moran spoke briefly on the topic of comments under articles. Joshing with colleague David...
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Good comments don’t just happen by magic
There’s been a lot of debate recently about whether news sites should have comments. I’m firmly in the pro camp because when done right, I believe comments can add as much to a story as a well-shot...
View ArticleWhy my friend’s engagement announcement shows Facebook has a long way to go
A few weeks ago, I got some good news. One of my good friends proposed to his girlfriend and she said yes. Finding out on Facebook on a thread with five of his other close friends, I couldn’t have been...
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Comments aren’t about driving traffic and revenue anymore – but we’ve...
Not so long ago, comments on many news sites were just a way of generating revenue. Lots of comments yielded higher page traffic through repeat visits and time spent on page as well as additional SEO...
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Solving Twitter abuse isn’t about a report button; it’s about educating users...
Twitter’s introduction of a report button was necessary after the events of the last week, during which Caroline Criado-Perez was subjected to hours of abuse for campaigning for Jane Austen to be the...
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A case study in comments: how asking for readers for their favourite books...
Recently, the case against comments has grown stronger. Alexandra Petri made a particularly strong case in the Washington Post in September, making the point that ‘you do not have to give people who...
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Why doing a HTML and CSS course suited me more than learning on my own
Writing my resolutions on a cupboard door didn’t have the effect I hoped In 2012, in those funny few days between Christmas and New Year, I made a pledge to learn to code during 2013. It was one of...
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What does a community editor do? Sometimes, they just say what everyone else...
Often I get asked what a community editor does, a question I sometimes find it hard to answer. But increasingly I tell people that it’s the community editor’s job to say what everyone else is thinking....
View Article‘I’d rather have a few committed readers than lots of casual, anonymous ones’...
As is always the case, I was pleased to receive an email from my good friend and journalist SA Mathieson last week. SA, who I worked with at The Guardian and who now works for EHI Intelligence as an...
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