Monday, February 23, 2009

Opportunity to Comment: Activating Links


Power Law of Participation by Ross Mayfield
Attribution-NonCommercial License
Commenting on a blog post helps the reader/commentator and the blog author. The author of the blog always benefits from the feedback of their colleagues and other readers, while the commentator benefits by sharing their ideas and related links. Even though anyone can write an adequate blog, there are many tips that will boost the efficacy of a blog. You can make the process faster and the writing better. The same could be said for the commentator.

When you take the time to comment and add to the conversation, I think you should include related links, including those that are directed to similar postings of your own. I am not alone in this opinion. There are many blog postings that explain why it's important to add appropriate and active links when commenting. This is a typical point about commentators linking through there comments:

Many bloggers (myself included) believe that good comments should be rewarded with a link back to the commenter's site (if they so choose to include one). However, the way you go about commenting and including a link will clearly demonstrate whether you are there to contribute or merely to take.
David Wallace, of SearchRank.


When commenting and adding to the educational professional development conversation, I hope you will use the .html that will give you an active link here on this blog that refers to the blog or website you are quoting. Here's how to insert the url and name of the link you want to activate:




Why do I hope you will do this? I want to continue the conversation. If your link in your comment is not active, most people will not take the time to copy and paste your link. We all benefit from your investment of time to learn this little bit of code used in Blogger, because your links will be active. Readers will have an opportunity to learn more and continue the professional development conversation. That helps all of us improve our educational practice which directly improves the educational experience of students as well.

The caveat is that many other blogging platforms use a different snippet of code, but you can learn these also. The more you practice adding active links, the more effective you will become in adding value to each conversation. Isn't that one of the reasons why we collaborate in our Professional Learning Network?

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Totally agree Sheryl. It's great to have comments from blog readers. I guess we're all tending to use microblogging (Twitter & Plurk in my case) to do our commenting & exchanging of ideas, leaving blog posts out there & lonely! Love the way Mayfield took the long tail concept & used it for participation.

samccoy said...

Carol, can you tell me more about Mayfield. Is there a link?

Yes, microblogging is a good way to comment, and I especially like the ease with which you can insert an active link in Plurk. I am not particularly fond of tinyurls. I use Interclue to view the link before I go there. It is quite helpful, a real productivity enhancer.

The reason I wrote this post on "Activating Links" is because another of our colleagues recently commented on one of my old postings from last year.

She included an excellent link, but it wasn't active. That made me realize that people may not know how to make the links hot.

Unknown said...

Thank you for the blog post Sheryl. Good post...

Useful to know and to be reminded.

Anonymous said...

Yes, comments help the writer as well as the community. So, if anyone wants to comment on my article on the education research that is being done at Carnegie Mellon, feel free.

samccoy said...

Abimbola, thanks for commenting. I found your blog. Your stories about life where you live were great. My family speaks the same language, but I have been laughed at by my cousins also. Maybe that is a universal experience.

samccoy said...

Mitch, your link was perfectly active, and your blog post is very interesting. Thanks for commenting.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this link, but unfortunately it seems to be down... Does anybody have a mirror or another source? Please reply to my post if you do!

I would appreciate if a staff member here at samccoy-n2teaching.blogspot.com could post it.

Thanks,
Alex

samccoy said...

The only link that is not active here is the SAMPLE. It is just a sample of how you should write the code to include a link in a comment. It's a .jpg file, and it refers to no outside link. Thanks for asking.

Anonymous said...

Greetings,

I have a message for the webmaster/admin here at samccoy-n2teaching.blogspot.com.

May I use part of the information from this post above if I provide a backlink back to this website?

Thanks,
Oliver

Anonymous said...

Hey,

I have a inquiry for the webmaster/admin here at samccoy-n2teaching.blogspot.com.

Can I use part of the information from your post right above if I give a link back to this site?

Thanks,
William

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Nice post, kind of drawn out though. Really good subject matter though.

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