After reading this, I tried to figure out what the desired end goals were. I think we can all agree that commenting for the sake of commenting is meaningless, so I looked for what would fill in the blank “commenting for the sake of ______”.
At the beginning of the post I saw: 1) I like getting comments (I see this as a bid for attention) 2) Staying in the public view (more comments = more staying power) 3) Learning on the side of the reader (commenting = engagement = better learning)
At the end of the post I saw: 4) Public attention incentivizes efforts to research and learn (I see this as attention as well) 5) People writing for comments write more engagingly 6) Learn how to comment better (what’s the goal of a comment? To learn better?) 7) Engaging writing decreases the chance that good thoughts don’t get lost (public view again)
With that, I’m seeing two main ideas: bids for attention and learning on behalf of the public. Bids for attention aren’t bad and I think a community has to respond to them for the community to work well. If a community never tells its members that they are seen and noticed, the community isn’t going to last very long. How does it change the writing and responding if we acknowledge these bids?
On public learning, I think it might help to look into the research on teaching. Additionally, the assertion of teacher and student will have to be addressed. The approach of “I have things you need to learn” is a bit off putting and likely to turn people away. However, this community seems to want to learn, so maybe a call for teachers on topics the community is interested in, and that can establish who is teacher and who is student.
On specifically the teaching/learning part, research in teaching shows that lecturing is very ineffective for learning. Many times, long written posts are simply data dumps that are similar to lectures. Effective teaching puts effort on the learner, tolerates and corrects mistakes, and encourages trying. The teacher may have the knowledge but doesn’t give the knowledge and instead helps the learner find the knowledge. I have no idea how well this would work in a web forum.
I think there are more ways that writing and commenting can be used, but these were the themes I picked up from this post. Perhaps by bringing them forward like this, the other uses of writing can be drawn out.
Upvoted for spelling out thinking in a goal-oriented way that functions a) as some useful insights, and b) a useful example of how other people could approach writing similar comments.
After reading this, I tried to figure out what the desired end goals were. I think we can all agree that commenting for the sake of commenting is meaningless, so I looked for what would fill in the blank “commenting for the sake of ______”.
At the beginning of the post I saw:
1) I like getting comments (I see this as a bid for attention)
2) Staying in the public view (more comments = more staying power)
3) Learning on the side of the reader (commenting = engagement = better learning)
At the end of the post I saw:
4) Public attention incentivizes efforts to research and learn (I see this as attention as well)
5) People writing for comments write more engagingly
6) Learn how to comment better (what’s the goal of a comment? To learn better?)
7) Engaging writing decreases the chance that good thoughts don’t get lost (public view again)
With that, I’m seeing two main ideas: bids for attention and learning on behalf of the public. Bids for attention aren’t bad and I think a community has to respond to them for the community to work well. If a community never tells its members that they are seen and noticed, the community isn’t going to last very long. How does it change the writing and responding if we acknowledge these bids?
On public learning, I think it might help to look into the research on teaching. Additionally, the assertion of teacher and student will have to be addressed. The approach of “I have things you need to learn” is a bit off putting and likely to turn people away. However, this community seems to want to learn, so maybe a call for teachers on topics the community is interested in, and that can establish who is teacher and who is student.
On specifically the teaching/learning part, research in teaching shows that lecturing is very ineffective for learning. Many times, long written posts are simply data dumps that are similar to lectures. Effective teaching puts effort on the learner, tolerates and corrects mistakes, and encourages trying. The teacher may have the knowledge but doesn’t give the knowledge and instead helps the learner find the knowledge. I have no idea how well this would work in a web forum.
I think there are more ways that writing and commenting can be used, but these were the themes I picked up from this post. Perhaps by bringing them forward like this, the other uses of writing can be drawn out.
Upvoted for spelling out thinking in a goal-oriented way that functions a) as some useful insights, and b) a useful example of how other people could approach writing similar comments.