Notes from the moderator

This week marks three months that BakersfieldTalks.com has been live. We’re seeing steady traffic to the site each day, with consistent user growth. My regular checks see new topics being posted each day and and lots of (fairly) civil discussion.

What do you think? Are there any changes you’d like to see on the site? It looks like everyone is adjusting to the new format.

Hope you’re enjoying it, see you online.

-Jamie

I just added a few updates to it. If I see the same questions coming up, I’ll post there.

I’m glad to see so many familiar users coming back to the site maintaining civil discussions. Thank you all for your feedback, as you can see we’ve made a lot of changes based on the things you’ve been telling us. And we’re not done just yet. More minor tweaks to come, including the addition of Tech and Health topics.

-Jamie

Based on your feedback, we made some significant changes to the site yesterday in an effort to make things easier to use. Below is a rundown of the tabs and what you’ll find under each of them.

What do you think? Keep the feedback coming.

HOME. Main screen. Biggest thing to note here is the Notes From the Moderator column. Look here for site news, policy changes, announcements, and updates like this. You’ll also see recently active members on the right, as well as a listing of the topics we’ve created. We’ll likely add and revise topics as we go along.

ACTIVITY. This tab shows ALL the activity, with the most recent at the top. It shows new discussion threads, comments, replies … everything. You can click the links (in blue) to read more on each item. You can also post an update here. This is a status update, similar to what you’d post on Facebook.

MEMBERS. You can see, sort and search all site members and their latest status updates. Click the tab view to see only the people you are friends with (linked to). Click on a name to go to their profile page to see all their posts or send them a private message.

TOPICS. Here are all the topics we have created. Click on one to read the threads in each topic. We plan to add more topics as we go along, so let us know if you have any ideas. ‘Around the Home’ and ‘Tech’ will be added soon.

DISCUSSIONS. This is my favorite place to start. Discussions are threads — individual conversations that you can reply to. You can sort the threads to see the most recently active or the ones with the most posts. Click on the title to read more and reply. At the top, you can click ‘new thread’ to start a conversation of interest to you. Any topic, you post it, you start the discussion. Don’t forget to select a topic forum for your thread. You can also add topical tags. On the right, you’ll see Forum Thread Tags, showing recent and popular tags. Click one to see everything tagged with that topic.

BAKERSFIELD.COM. We call this the Bread Crumb, it takes you back to our main site.

OTHER NOTES

• Favorites vs. likes. Like a comment but don’t really have anything to add? Click like to show your support. Like a thread so much you want to hang on to it? Favorite it. Favorites are like bookmarks, you can view all your favorites on your profile page.

• You can add up to three links to your posts and comments. If you have more than three links, your posts and comments go to moderation. This helps prevent spam.

• Chris (BIG round of applause for Chris for all his work!) will be adding the site footer to the bottom of the page to direct you to things across the Bakersfield.com network. That will probably appear on Friday.

I think that’s it for now. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Thank you for all your feedback.

Meet-up at Starbucks in The Marketplace on Ming 8:30-10:30 a.m. Friday. Hope to see you there!

Hi folks -

You’ll see a lot of changes around here today. After reviewing your feedback, we’re consolidating and renaming some things to make BakersfieldTalks.com easier to use. Later today or early tomorrow I’ll post here explaining what’s what.

Keep the feedback coming!

Will there be a spell check function?

No. Modern web browsers have spell check built into them, underlining or auto-correcting misspelled words. We recommend Firefox, but make sure you’re on the latest version of whatever browser you’re using.

TIP: Forums tab

To see the most recent/active/posted to threads, click on the ‘Forums’ tab. There you can see the latest poster, the topic it was posted to, and the number of replies. You can sort your list by last active or most posts. Click on the thread to read it and read and post replies. You can also click on ‘new thread’ and start a new thread on a new subject, just remember to select a topic in the drop-down before you click ‘post thread’.

TIP: New thread titles

Make sure you’re keeping them short and using key words. Think about how you click or don’t click on threads based on how the title is worded.

Post your questions or tips below or email them to JButow@bakersfield.com.

How are you liking the new BakersfieldTalks.com?

LOG-INS: We see that there are a few isolated log-in issues, we’re working to fix those. If you’re having trouble logging in, send me an email (jbutow@bakersfield.com) with your username, any error message you’re getting, and if you’re logging in with your Bakersfield.com account or another account ID such as Facebook. But before that, try completely quitting out of your web browser and restarting your computer. If you’re still having problems, drop me a note.

POST VS. REPLY: If you want to reply to another post, make sure you click the ‘reply’ link below the post. In your account setting you can choose to be notified by email when someone else comments on that post or replies to you.

TOPICS: Are there other topics you’d like to see? The suggest for ‘Around the home’ was made for things like cooking and gardening. Thoughts?

We know it will take some getting used to, but  this platform offers much more that the previous way of doing things. Let us know what you think.

Jamie

Here it is, folks. Brand-spankin’ new threaded discussion forums. We’ve been working on and testing them out for a while now, so we hope you like them. As with everything on the internet, it’s always a work in progress, so let us know what you think. This page is the place to check to see what’s new and what’s happening and get answers to questions and solutions to problems. Myself and other moderators will post notes here. You can post a topic-specific comment below, or send an email to moderator@bakersfield.com — it will go to several of us since I do sleep .

A couple of things to get started:

• We’ve created several topics for you to post in. If you can’t find a home for your post, there is the ‘All the Rest … ‘ topic. If we see a lot of interested in something, we’ll create a separate topic.

• You can create your own thread by typing in the text box at the top of the topic, or reply to another users post by clicking reply. If you’re replying, make sure you click reply. Starting a whole other thread on the same topic will just cause some readers to post in only one place, thus limiting the discussion.

BE NICE. As was on our former B.com blogs, you must be civil. We will not tolerate hate speech, racism, trolls, or name calling of any kind. You will be bounced from the site and with new procedures we put in place to approve all user registrations, we won’t let you back on. So watch the insults. Even if you THINK you are being constructive, think about how the person on the receiving end may take it.

Another tip: Don’t dominate the conversation. Let other people have their say, you don’t have to reply to everything.

Take a minute to review our updated Terms of Use.

From time to time, I’ll post links and articles on this blog about online community conversation. I hope you’ll read them and ask yourself how you can make BakersfieldTalks.com a more productive and engaging place.

Discuss away.

Jamie Butow, Moderator

http://www.bakersfield.com/jamiebutow