5 Tips to Quality Comments

authenticlearning on

The internet is full of bad commenting, especially on places like Twitter and Facebook. Here are my tips to quality comments.

  • No personal attacks: I see lots of commenters attacking someone calling them “libtards” “snowflakes” “white supremacists” and other pejoratives. It doesn’t do any good and only makes people angry.
  • Check your posts: I’m guilty of posting quickly without proofreading just like everyone. Even though I don’t use Twitter, I know that you can’t edit posts. Donald Trump gets criticized for posting without proofreading, but many of us do it, too. Facebook does allow edits, which is nice and I take advantage of it to fix errors.
  • Thoughtful questions: Think of questions that are well thought out and will cause people to think about the topic from multiple angles.
  • Compliments: I notice that Instagram is full of positivity and compliments, much more so than the other platforms. People like positive affirmation and it helps them to improve in the future to know what has been done well. Don’t lie and flatter the poster, though. It doesn’t help.
  • Keep it short: I get really annoyed when people post long comments without thinking through a concise way to say things. Facebook is bad about this because there are no limits to length. I think that is why Twitter limits to 280 characters. It increases the quality of comments because people can’t ramble on. On Instagram, the format means that people don’t feel the need to ramble.

10 thoughts on “5 Tips to Quality Comments”

  1. Wow!! These are EXCELLENT suggestions for comments. And very well-written! I, for one, am VERY guilty of the last one. I tend to ramble. I feel like that the more I write, the more the person will know I care about their post. But I supposed brevity can do the same thing.

    What do you look for in a blog post? Do the same guidelines apply?

    Happy blogging!

    Karen

    1. Thanks for the comment. To answer your question, attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. We used to watch the nightly cable news or read the newspaper and now we get our news in 140 characters on social media. We’ve all made comments on social media on a topic by just reading the headlines of articles. We’ve seen a huge decline in the quality of news because of this. I believe the shorter attention spans necessitate being more concise with our writing. As an educator, I’ve spoken about this with other teachers. We can see how students have shorter and shorter attention spans and we’re having to modify our classes accordingly. There will always be an audience for longer, more nuanced pieces, but the majority of consumers prefer bite size chunks.

      1. Hi authenticlearning,
        I really agree with your points. I am glad people are recognizing this problem. I will be sure to visit your blog often for other tips.

  5. Hi Evanne,

    You have quite a comprehensive list of commenting tips! I agree that sometimes people get into “shouting matches” in the comment section, which is not at all appropriate and often stray way off the topic. I do have to slightly disagree on your last point about the difference between Facebook and Twitter comments. Just because Twitter only allows 280 characters does not necessarily mean the comment is of better quality. Some people post awful things on Twitter. Whether we are tweeting or posting comments on a blog, we need to take a deep breath and think about the consequences of what we are going to write.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
    Sincerely,
    Mrs. Ruffing
    http://cougarcraft.edublogs.org/

  6. Dear Evanne,
    I like your post I learned so much from your your post. Did I do a good quality comment please comment me back when you get the chance.
    Sincerely,
    Perry k

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