[Bug 19847] New: A strong VOTE for comments. An essential feature.

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=19847

          Priority: P2
            Bug ID: 19847
          Assignee: team-webplatform-admin@w3.org
           Summary: A strong VOTE for comments. An essential feature.
        QA Contact: public-webplatform-bugs@w3.org
          Severity: normal
    Classification: Unclassified
                OS: All
          Reporter: rickhassen@hotmail.com
          Hardware: PC
            Status: NEW
           Version: unspecified
         Component: Comments Extension
           Product: webplatform.org

Hey all, I was talking with Peter and discovered that comments are considered a
feature that might go away. I hope it stays as I think it is an essential
feature. Please hear why - it allows a kind of collaboration and discussion on
a larger scale - and in a different modality than when editing a document as
well as giving those who may not feel confident to change a document to post
questions or add an angle on a subject and allows for a more "conversation
level" communication about the topic at hand. Oddly, I didn't realize Web
Platform had this feature at first because the icon vanishes on my browser, BUT
I was going to suggest it to Peter, which started the whole conversation and
his suggestion that I put my thoughts into the bug tracker. 

Why, you may ask, was I going to suggest this feature. I've recently had an
experiences while learning Mercurial, a terminal-based versioning program,
which has a free book online which was also published by Orielly. The free
online version has an additional feature, comments on each paragraph. I got
more out of the comments than I did from the actual book. It was wonderful to
have people debate points, disagree with the author and point to links that
explained things. People could also post how they didn't understand something
and then someone else would come along and answer the question. This, in
particular was extremely helpful because, oftentimes I would have the same
question. And it was answered there in the comments. Perhaps this could inspire
someone who knows their stuff to edit the doc itself, but how would they know
without the comments?


So, here is a link to the aforementioned example of this working really well:
http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/mercurial-in-daily-use.html

And if you don't use Mercurial, I highly suggest it - its much faster than Git
and Subversion...though you can find debates on the finer points of why some
users like one versioning program over another in the comments of this book! 

Seriously, on-page-contextual-commenting allows one to have a sense of
community and conversation as well for a more direct (q&a) communication when
you need/want it, since one can ignore the comments if you want.

Thanks for considering keeping this feature and please feel free to contact me
if there is anything I can do to help support or develop this feature.

(UX/UI note: I think that the comments should be nearly invisible, but there
for those who want it, when they want it)

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Received on Saturday, 3 November 2012 19:55:57 UTC