Your Nerdlets are now conversationally super-powered. Comments are now threaded (you can reply to other people’s comments), easier to manage, easier to subscribe to, and better all around.
This is a long post, so let me give you the bottom line: Nerdlets.org values your comments, and hopes that you will participate in the ongoing discussion that happens here. I want to know how you are using computing technology, particularly if you are using it for the direct benifit of Christ’s kingdom. The new commenting system is designed to facilitate community involvement. It also allows you to promote yourself and your own ideas: the more you participate in the discussion here the more you can draw positive attention to yourself, and to your blog, website, or social service. Read on to find out how!
Blogging is Supposed to be Social
Blogging is supposed to be a social medium. For a variety of reasons, the social aspect of blogging has dwindled in the last couple of years. Partly this is because of limitations in most blogging software, and these limitations are gradually being fixed (WordPress 2.7, for example, will feature basic threading of comments). Another factor is the rise of more directly social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.
Personally I think we can restore community to the Blog, and to that end I have installed IntenseDebate. Recently acquired by the folks at WordPress, IntenseDebate brings a variety of social features to any Blog.
Features of IntenseDebate
You will notice that the basic commenting interface is still simple to use and intuitive, and anybody can post regardless of whether or not you have an account with Nerdlets or IntenseDebate
Yet there are some interesting new features available to those willing to create an account with IntenseDebate (which is very easy to do: just click the box says create an accound).
- Reply to comments. You can now reply to someone else’s comment, or start a fresh thread. This essentially turns each Blog Post into a forum. No more “@username’ syntax. Because comments are now hierarchical they are now more conversational.
- Subscribe to comments. You can now easily subscribe to the comments for a particular post.
- Email Notification. If you post a comment and someone replies to your comment you can choose to be notified by email.
- Rate comments. Nerdlets is now a community. Anyone can rate the helpfulness of other people’s comments. The higher your rank the more prestigious you are, and the more prestigious you are the more people will trust what you have to say. This can help drive traffic to your own blog (I always notice a spike on Nerdlets after I post a comment on someone else’s blog) and increase your reputation in the online world.
- Comment across blogs. You can use your IntenseDebate account with any blog that has IntenseDebate installed. Your comments are recorded by IntenseDebate, and your rank is retained throughout, again promoting new conversations and helping you to increase your online reputation.
- OpenID. If you are worried about having yet another user name and password, IntenseDebate supports OpenID. The best part: you probably already have an OpenID account (go here to see why). OpenID allows you to securely sign into a multitude of different online services by means of a unique URL and is supported by a number of internet companies, including Google (if you have a blogspot blog), Yahoo, Flickr, and Technorati.
- Better Nerdlets Navigation. IntenseDebate provide a couple of widgets that help increase the usefulness of this site. Most recent comments are show in the sidebar, for example, as are the most popular posts. If enough people sign up with IntenseDebate I can also add a widget that ranks readers by the helpfulness of their comments (which is determined by the aforementioned rating system). This is yet another way you can draw attention to yourself (and your own blog or website) by participating in Nerdlets.
- You can find more information here.
Conclusions
The bottom line: your participation on Nerdlets.org not only benifits this site, it now benifits you! I hope that this will increase our ability to dialog about the intersection of Christianity, theology, and computer technology.
