Link: How To Make Discussion Happen on DW

[sonia]

melannen wrote a great post on How To Make Discussion Happen On DW.

There's two basic principles to bear in mind going in. The first is that leaving a comment requires both effort and risk on the part of the person commenting, and your goal is to lower that threshhold of both risk and effort as far as possible. [...]

The second thing is that when you make a post with the specific goal of generating lots of discussion, you are essentially inviting people to a gathering in your space. [...] And as a host, I have duties - I have to make the space welcoming; I have to make sure people know that they're invited; I have to give people a reason to want to come; I have to remember that I'm in a position of responsibility for the guests who are in my space; I have to be ready to unobtrusively deal with messes; etc.

Lots of specific advice in the post, and more useful discussion in comments, too (of course). Good food for thought. I love getting comments, but I haven't crafted my posts to try to get more of them.

Comments

[sonia]

Yeah, I learned that my behavior as a commenter isn't unusual either. Or we all have social anxiety!