Webs

Are such fragile things.  Woven afresh each day.

Thanks to everyone who chipped in yesterday about the changes to Blip.  I'm heartened by your sharings and am inclined now to agree with MariainWales' idea that the emergence of a strong community might have been more of a serendipitous by-product of the original site design and its organic growth, rather than something intentionally designed in.  It feels now like some mechanisms that fostered communication and community may have been designed out in the new set-up.


This is my favourite comment stumbled over elsewhere about the changes: 
For me, the most important feature of Blip is ease of interaction between members. Some think that has been reduced. If they think that it has, then it has.


I'm encouraged to continue trying to identify aspects that make interaction more difficult in this dialogue.  COMMENTS or rather, ease of commenting and responding was on my list and highlighted by others yesterday.  There's an interesting discussion relating to COMMENTS on the comments thread of MiW's reflective post here.


I wrote a longish comment somewhere on the 'forums' about how difficult I find the new notification system for comments and replies.  I've just spent half an hour trying to find my comment on the 'forums', gave up.  I'll add it here if I find it.  I'm not entirely clear what makes the new notifications so scrambling, but scrambled I feel when using it [K's comments yesterday shed some light].  

The other thing I find obstructive is the new position of the comments box at the top of the comments thread - this came out in convo with Linda yesterday - I find it somewhat isolating, as before in having to scroll down I would naturally pick up on some of the other comments which would often influence my own comment, something closer to a group discussion, which for me added depth and context to the conversation.  Now to get that same experience I need to scroll down then scroll back up to make my comment.  This feels more chopped up and less like I'm joining in an ongoing flow.  I guess that's a direct reflection of the way I like to engage with the relatively small number of journals I follow [see yesterday's thread for the other side, Linda liked it, perhaps you do to.  All views welcome. here.[/i]

So what, if anything, interferes with COMMENTING for you in the new set-up?