A Comment On SezWho
Last week I posted on the Conversation on Comments, and talked, among other things about the rating by strangers aspect of SezWho. Being rated doesn’t bother me personally, but it does not strike me as a way to promote more conversation, and having a ‘reputation’ number assigned by unseen parties who may or may not even be participating makes me uncomfortable.
There are already plenty of reasons that cause 90% of open forum and comment readers to lurk, whereas the participation numbers in closed forums are something like 80%. (I can’t find the exact numbers or source on this, but when/if I do, I’ll edit this post here to add it.)
Today I made my first Sezwho comment, on the Read/Write Web post about information silos, and discovered something else that I’m not too happy about, which is that the poster’s name link to a url is no longer direct. It either goes through SezWho, or gets logged by them. I’m wondering how that improves comment conversation.
Aren’t there enough people tracking us already? Capturing commenters’ identities as part of aggregating their comments makes sense to me. More than that I’m not happy about. I realize that coComments, which I’m trying out, has similar aspects. The difference, to me, is that I make the choice to use coComment or not. I’m also musing on whether we’ll see any shift in the makeup of regular commenters with SezWho in favor of those who find this form of incentive appealing.
The primary feature of SezWho, which is a profile showing other comments made by the same poster, is attractive at first. I got to thinking, though, that if I make a comment of support to a friend on a more personal topic, it doesn’t always belong among comments I make on business discussions. So the feature makes me think about holding back on one or the other. It would seem that the alternative is more anonymity, and you know how I feel about that.
To improve the conversation further, my subject comment was then quoted (with a link/attribution to me) on a closed forum blog that it appears I’d have to register for to read. Maybe I’ll get an invitation.
July 31st, 2007 at 2:15 am
Hey Vera,
The link to your site from the comment name does not go through SezWho…I am not sure I understand what you are saying?
Also we are working on a algorithm that will only show context specific comments in your profile…So, for example, if you made a comment about personal stuff on a friends blog we will try and figure out the difference in contexts and only show the relevant context specific comments. Also we provides a way in which users can choose which of their comments they want to be showing up in their profile my editing their profile information…Our goal really is to have users in full control of what shows up in their profiles…
Thanks,
Jitendra
SezWho
July 31st, 2007 at 3:21 am
Hi Jitendra,
When I hover my mouse over a posting name or id that is linked, it shows the url, and it is a SezWho.com url. Is that what you are asking me to clarify?
Having control over your own profile and information is a good thing, but I didn’t see these options.
My post is expressing my personal views about a number of issues that are important to me as well as about SezWho. These views may be shared by others or not. If you believe that I have stated something inaccurate about SezWho, please let me know. If there are specific features for control of one’s own information by people interacting with SezWho that I have missed or don’t know about, I’d be happy to add them to the post.
Vera