We have seen many requests over time from users, for SimilarWorlds to a have "Blog" feature.
While brainstorming, an idea came to mind of how we might be able to accomplish a "Basic" yet adequate and useful form of a Blog feature, without making too many drastic changes away from the current Posts feature.
Currently, Posts follow this structure, where Comments and Replies can be made by any user who has access to that post:
Post (OP - Original Poster) - Comment -- Reply (Nested Comments) -- Reply
- Comment -- Reply -- Reply
This format is great for generating lots of activity between commenters and instant feedback, where each Top-Level Comment can have its on Mini-Thread.
We are considering the idea of allowing another post type, known as "Blog Posts", where the permissions structure within the entire thread slightly changes.
In the case of our Blogs, where other users would previously be able to "Top-Level Comment", that feature will only be reserved for the owner of the post (Original Poster).
Other users will be able to Reply (Nested) to the Comments / Updates of OP user.
Blog Post (OP - Original Poster) - Update / Comment (OP) -- Reply (Other Users, or OP) -- Reply
- Update / Comment (OP) -- Reply -- Reply
Here is a quick structural draft of the general idea:
Post vs Blog Post:
The Blog Post format can be especially useful for those who would like to post more lengthy content, either as segments or updates, all contained in one thread, instead of having to create an entirely new post each time.
This can be great for: Blogs / Vlogs, Journals, Stories, Status Updates, sharing Creative Works, Quizzes/Games, and more!
Please feel free to let us know what you think about this idea (which is currently just a draft idea, and not yet confirmed for development).
Kind regards!
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I don't know if it's a feature I would use. it's hard to get a feel from the description. But I am all for anything that makes it easier to post longer-form content.
@ShadowSister This suggestion doesn't make anything easier, it just prevents other users from creating top level comments. What would make things easier for long form posts would be the ability to prepare them offline.
@ninalanyon You are one of the people here I know uses the space as a makeshift blog. Isn't this essentially how you are doing your blog now?
I remember trying out the blog feature way back in the EP days. I put a ton of time into a particular post, only to find that it worked way worse than I thought it would. I would have been better off to just find a group to post under.
@Yulianna I have done the same. But more often than not, I have just used the SW editor and pushed through.
@ShadowSister i like to write stuff off line so i can keep SW open for chats... it is too awkward to write and chat at the same time on SW... at least, i have not found a good way to do it.
@ShadowSister @Yulianna Yes, I do and I don't see that the new proposal makes any meaningful difference. And I also sometimes create long posts in a text editor (Emacs) but it doesn't work very well because the SW editor doesn't reflow paragraphs so I end up with unnecessary line breaks.
The one feature that I want added to SW is the ability to assign tags to posts so that one post can be in more than one category. This would make finding posts of interest much easier and would mean that we could drop the pretence that our posts belong in some specific group. With a small amount of effort on the part of the admins tags could even be suggested automatically. I have spent the last few days removing myself from all but a handful of groups (mostly those that have seen no activity this year) and I'm considering deleting those as well.
@Yulianna I usually ignore my messages if I am drafting a post. Some people get irritated by that because they see I am online. But too bad, my time is my own. I never assume others owe me a response when I message them, and I don't owe them a response either. PMs are an asynchronous medium, so I get to them when I get to them.
Hmm. This might be worthy of a post actually. I think there may be a conversation to be had here.
@ninalanyon When I do write with another application, I will usually paste into Notepad and then re-copy/paste from Notepad. That strips off all the additional code that Word automatically inserts, and you are left with just clean text. That usually clears up my editing issues.
