If you check out the sidebar you will see that I have added Skribit for 2008. This has been developed by a group including Paul Stamatiou and is a creative and cool way of letting readers suggest and vote on future topics for the blog.
Now you may think that is lazy and that it is my responsibility to generate content and you are 100% correct. It is and always will be, but as many of you know I am always open to to suggestions and I thought this may be a good way of making it even easier for you to suggest things and to build up the community side of the blog more. If there is one thing I want to achieve more with the blog in 2008 it is to get even more people contributing to the excellent debates and discussions that the posts create from time to time. My task is to generate the content to stimulate that debate for sure, but if from time to time you have a suggestion then skribit is the way to go.
Skribit is currently in a closed beta so thanks to Paul for giving me this early access to it.
On the subject of involvement if you haven’t already left a comment on the site, or even if you have, why not take the opportunity to leave a comment on this post to introduce yourself and tell people a little about you, your sites etc. You are more than welcome.
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Hmmm. I’m not sure about this – as it currently stands. Out of curiosity, I clicked one of the VOTE buttons. Something happened, but there was no obvious change of state. I was expecting to get a subsequent state in which I could clarify whether my vote was for or against the subject, but this didn’t happen. I guess, therefore, that clicking on VOTE is expressing a vote in favour of the topic.
Can you clarify the operation?
That is indeed what happens. If you vote you are showing approval, and I get to see how amny people are in favour of that topic on my control panel.
It is rudamentary at the moment but has some extra features planned for later in the year.
In addition to voting on existing topics you can add your own as well …..
Thanks for clarifying. Having sensed it would be something like that, I balanced my initial inappropriate positive vote by voting once on each of the other topics.
I have just now made an informed vote. 🙂 This time it was a topic which was not at the top of the list and I noticed that it moved to the top of the list. I think I recall that my first attempt to vote earlier was on the item already at the top of the list, hence the apparent lack of state change.
Yep, that is it. If you click on the actual title i.e. 5 Photo Apps you will see what it is that is been proposed.
Oh-ho! I hadn’t spotted that… Some are pretty obvious, but others are less so.
Thanks for the comments guys – this is exactly the type of feedback I’m looking for, from regular users not yet familiar with Skribit.
@Paul It might be an idea to consider two vote buttons – for and against. As it stands, you can only tell if I’m in favour of a particular article being pursued. You can’t distinguish between neutral feelings or distaste for a suggested topic. A feeling for your audience’s negative feelings on a particular topic could be as valuable to some authors as their interest in other topics. Perhaps that could be a feature for Skribit Pro? 🙂
One other thing – can we please get an apostrophe at the end of “Hoppin”? It seems a little odd that you correctly use one in the first word, but not the second. As a fully paid up pedant, I have to say that the inconsistency irritates… 🙂
I have noticed that when people leave a suggestion with a link it just shows the html?
I definitely agree with Gary about the idea to Vote against a certain topic, would allow a lot more feedback for the skribit owner. Also is there a way to change the title, as I’m think not everyone would want to use the title “What’s Hoppin?”. Some alternate themes for it would also be cool, so that you can choose one that fits nicely with your blogs theme.
I like it so far!
[quote comment=”29084″]I have noticed that when people leave a suggestion with a link it just shows the html?[/quote]
As Chris says – left a suggestion for Chris and any html I put in for a hyperlink just appears in the post.
Other than that, a very cool little blog app – I have signed up! interested to find out if the appearance will become customisable in terms of colours etc to allow it to fit neatly into designs (aware this may be a future feature etc!)
As for introductions to other readers – I’m Dunks and I’m an alcoh…
I’d be surprised if skinning couldn’t be added fairly easily, maybe nearer the full release. Maybe tied into the “blogid” parameter (or an additional, new parameter) in the HTML and administered from the Skribit site when logged in to admin your account?
@Chris – yeah, we’re not parsing HTML for suggestion text. Now that I see people want to share links, I think we can add something to facilitate that.
@Gary – definitely. We want the widget to look and feel like your own blog design so we plan on letting you be able to change colors and basic design. More on that later..
@Paul – I gave you a pretty big shout on Tim’s MacReviewCast today. Have no doubt I pronounced your name wrong though!!!!
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