Woohoo! We’re already rolling with the Comment Challenge! We have 27 participants in just 24 hours!
And everyone was so generous to sign up without even knowing how to participate!
And did you notice our fabulous logo courtesy of Silvia Tolisano?
What a great network of blog citizens we have already!
So, on to the crucial question: How can you participate in the Comment Challenge?
Step 1: Sign up on the wiki (this is a public wiki, so you don’t actually need to be a member to add your name – but you are more than welcome to join!)
Step 2: Sign up for an account on coComment (free, of course)
Step 3: Add the coComment extension to make it easy to track your conversations (if you have any trouble with this extension try clearing your cache, it worked like a charm for me)
Step 4: RSS your conversations in coComment so you can keep track of your comments easily (see screenshot below)
Step 5: Join the Comment Challenge group in coComment
Step 6: Share your conversations with the group (Sue is working on a detailed howto for that step right now)
Done!
The coolest thing about this coComment group is that it will track all of the comments for all of the people that are members – so we can actually follow all of the conversations that get started because of this challenge. And, we can discover all the excellent new blogs that are getting other participants thinking. We will host the RSS feed for the Comment Challenge group on the wiki so everyone can keep track.
We’re also looking for quick activities to promote excitement about commenting and help us all become better blog citizens – thanks to Michele for that brilliant idea! If you have any activity ideas, please share them here, or on the Activities page of the wiki.
Two more days to go!
Tags: comment08, commenting, comment, challenge, blog citizen, cocomment, Sue Waters, Silvia Tolisano, The Comment Challenge, Michele Martin,
Hey Kim, followed your steps, did it and can’t wait to see it all working out. Looking forward to the challenge of being a better blog citizen!
An excellent idea to connect and expand our knowledge base. This will be a good way to demonstrate the benefits of blogging and social networking.
Hi Kim,
Your instructions were excellent. Hope this Cocommenter works. Not really understanding it, but what’s new. This a great incentive to be a more responsive member of the blogosphere.
All the best,
Doug
Hi Kim,
I think I have all the bases covered. Now I need to start updating my blog! Your step by steps were just great.
Chris Dahl
I’m really pumped up to start the 30 day challenge. Your timing is great! I just started blogging with my 8th graders and now I can model appropriate comment etiquette and use some of the student blogging activities from the wiki. Thanks!
I am going to love watching this happen…not only are some great minds going to start commenting, but also I am sure it’s going to link me to some new blogs to read!
Great project, Kim.
I’m really excited about this project, I started a bit early out of the gates yesterday. Let’s see if the coCommnet works on this page.
Look, there’s the deep end! And look, here we are jumping in!
By the time I typed in the strange captcha word I forgot what I was going to say!
Oh, I’ve signed up with cocomment but normally I use delicious to track my own comments on others blogs. Perhaps I could add the tag comment08 there as well for this month and we can feed the RSS in from there as well.
pre-moderation as well as captcha?
That’s not very encouraging to us commenters. Perhaps that’s something you could experiment with doing without during the challenge. Always learning.
Ok Kim I am not big on commenting but maybe this will make me be more involved in conversations. I often feel that I have little to add to the conversation , but certainly enjoy listening to it! Let the Challenge begin!!
Exciting! I’m ready for the challenge. I’ve been an active listener in many blogs, but only lately have I really engaged in very interesting conversations through comments and the power they hold is just impressive for reflection, redirection, and learning. Thanks for your generosity. I’m in!
Thanks for the clear instructions!! I´m already learning a lot and this is just the first day. I hope to be able to follow every comment and start commenting in many blogs.
Well I am up for the challenge- my baseline is as low as possible I think! I have a real elementary question: how do I add the comment08 tag to by blog postings. I can’t find a box to add tags (tho sure I have seen ii on our class blogs). I tried changing the theme, but no change. Do I have to do something clever?
I am definitely up for this. Finished my research project and still have a final exam to go (the student part of my life is more demanding than the teacher part right now) but if I put this off, I’ll think about it all the time and not get any studying done anyway. So, I’m giving myself a time limit (one hour tonight) to do some reading and post some comments.
CoComment doesn’t seem to work in Flock, so I’m back on Firefox and I’m wondering how to make Firefox be more “flocklike.”
Sarah
I have to admit I don’t quite get it. But I explored cocomment once before (installed the extension) and didn’t get it then either. So this looks like a great project to both get the conversations going and get me understanding cocomment.
Thanks Kim and Sue and others!
Jo,
So glad to have you with us!
Lorna,
Thanks! I love the idea of using the Challenge as a visible example for the positive effects of blogging!
Doug,
Thanks for joining the Challenge! coComment is great, and improving every day, thanks to their amazingly responsive staff. Let us know if you have any feedback and @Sue can pass it on.
Chris,
Thank you so much for joining! Susan Sedro is here in Bangkok this weekend and was so excited to see you taking part in the Challenge! Turns out our Salon members are connected in more ways than one!
CCassinelli,
Excellent! Thoughtful and meaningful commenting can be a big hurdle for middle schoolers (well, any student) so this will be a great way to start your blogging initiative!
Dennis,
That’s what I’m so excited about – connecting to new bloggers! Should be very interesting!
Brian,
Love your enthusiasm! Thank you so much for joining the Challenge!
Shelly,
Right on! Both feet first!
Andy,
Oh, that captcha stuff drives me crazy! I wonder if I can turn it off. Have to investigate that one.
Absolutely, please do add the tag in delicious – in fact, please feel free to add the RSS for the delicious tag on the wiki! Thanks for the great idea!
Looks like you got your commenting in even with the hassle of the captcha and the moderation. I definitely need the moderation given all the spam I get, but the captcha can go. Just have to figure out how to get rid of it.
Carla,
Thanks so much for joining. I love your statement: “the power [comments] hold is just impressive for reflection, redirection, and learning.” That just sums it up perfectly for me!
Jennifer,
Excellent! So glad to have you on board!
Chris,
Check Silvia’s recent post about how to tag posts (it’s really just a link to the technorati tag you put on your post). Nothing too clever :)
Sarah,
So glad to have you on board! I’m not sure about this, but I think you can add the extension in Flock too… Have you checked coComment’s “help” page? Also, there are some great training videos on Flock, this one is my favorite and it’ seems to suggest that standard FF add-ons will work with Flock too. Check it out!
Cindy,
When opportunity knocks, right? Thanks so much for joining!
Hi Kim – just to clarify — do I need to do anything special in order for my comments to be tracked in the CoComment Group? I’m trying to get this all sorted out. The last time I used CoComment was a couple of years ago; I gave it up because it was so buggy, but am inspired to try it again now!
(crossing fingers that this comment gets “tracked” somehow?)
Hi MsMichetti,
We are glad you are giving cocomment another chance. Te answer your immediate question, you comment gets tracked if you have downloaded the cocomment plug in, very simple, done from the home page. You will then see a bar underneath the comment box leting you know that we are tracking this comment. Click on the track button so you get updates on responses.
Please contact me at joaquin@cocomment.com with any other issues you have regarding the installation or how to use it.
Thanks and looking forward to your comments!
Joaquin
Hello Sarah,
I will look into the issue that you can’t use cocomment with Flock. Will get back to you as to what you can do.
Thanks
Joaquin
cocomment
still hoping to work out what all this is about and whether i have a future as a blogger. thanks for the inspiration anyway.
@msmichetti
The sharing was a bit complicated for me to figure out – I’m guessing Sue has a post up already, but I just figured it out on my own. Basically you have 2 options:
1. If you’re using the extension/plug-in, click on the “Share” button on the bottom of the comment box, choose Groups, and click The Comment Challenge (you have to join the group first on the coComment page).
2. If you forget to do it the first way, go to your coComment page “my conversations” and click on options next to each conversation you want to share. You’ll find the share button there and you can follow exactly the same process.
What is wish is that coComment could automatically add all conversations tagged with a specific tag into a group… Maybe that’s in the works?
@elpollo
Thanks for the help, though I’m not sure if that was exactly @msmichetti’s question. I hope I answered it above :)
Great to see the coComment team being so amazingly responsive, that’s for sure! Any plans for implementing a sharing service through common tagging as I describe above?
@howard
I say everyone has a future as a blogger! Just share what you’re interested in and passionate about and you will find an audience!