Who sees the public coments?

Question

At the bottom of a profile page there is a place for public comment.  Where does this get posted?  Who sees this?

Answer 1

I will have to say that I hate comments.  If they provide useful information about the profile they're on, why not actually include the information in the profile with an edit?  If you're making a suggestion about the profile, know that it will sit on the profile almost permanently until you yourself have deleted it, because anyone else deleting it gets a huge warning message.  Suggests often come across as criticisms of those who created the profile as it is now, and they're stuck with the comment on the profile until you remove it.  Sometimes comments appear such as "this is my 17th great-grandfather -- the kind of thing that would be spam if everyone did it.  That can't be deleted either.  

But you can't really carry on a conversation with a comment -- the person who got your comment is supposed to respond on  YOUR profile -- but then you only have half the conversation!

So I say, fix the profile, send a private note, posting a query on G2G -- do anything except leave a comment!  A private note intended to be helpful will often be appreciated where the same comment placed in a public comment will sometimes be more likely interpreted as an attack!

Comments

Sorry Jack, I always thought that the comments spot was for collaboration. I'd rather not tread in someones toes by adding something, especially something that may be controversial, without first mentioning it in a comment which will be sent to the PM or as is often the case, the multiple pms.It is also visible to others who may have a great interest  and investment in  the profile but are not pms.

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You're right Helen, they can be used for collaboration, and that was probably their original intention, but I agree with Jack here... collaboration with these comment boxes are awkward at best, and almost useless otherwise -- especially when replies are split across personal profiles.

There are no rules -- including no rule that you are supposed to reply on the other person's profile (sorry Jack) -- nor any enforcement, and everyone uses them differently. Comments tend to never get deleted, as there's no revision history, and they end up filling the page, looking ugly.

I agree with Jack -- just make the change.

Otherwise, collaboration is often best done either here on G2G (also a bit awkward though), or on a designated Free Space page.

 

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I'm not clear on the advantage of a comment, which is a public note that one cannot reply to (well, one can add one's own comment, but there's no assumption that the writer of the first note will see it), versus a private note that the recipient CAN reply to.  Is there anyone who would assert that two-way conversations are LESS collaborative than one-way conversations?

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I'm not clear on the advantage of a comment, which is a public note that one cannot reply to

One way to make public comments more useful would be to allow users to opt-in to the edit feed on profiles without having to be "approved" to the Trusted List by the PM.  Then anybody who wanted to be included in conversation about the profile could see that a message was posted, and respond on the profile to everybody else who is interested.  And the interactive conversation would then be available for future researchers who may stumble onto the same puzzle. 

As it is now, often only one participant in the conversation is receiving real-time notifications that somebody would like to engage.  

FWIW I understand that the site owners might be thinking of G2G as the place where that kind of multi-way conversation can happen but in my experience it is unrealistic to think that everybody who might want to talk about the ancestor is going to see a thread about the profile for the brief period of time it appears on their G2G front page.

Just my two cents.

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I've been using comments to say I noticed something strange with a profile, such as noting that in the list of children there are several duplicates or a daughter with the same birth year as the father. I don't make the change myself because I don't know enough about the sources to know which pieces are correct and which are not. For this reason comments are useful.

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Sometimes you can't "fix the profile" - because the privacy level is set to some form of Private.  So public comments are useful to put these snippets (and source!) into.

Answer 2

It gets posted in a grey box on the right hand side of the page.

Comments

Also, the profile managers are notified about the comment.

Answer 3

It gets posted on the profile itself.  Everybody can see it (so for any private or sensitive information, you want to use a Private Message).

Then, like Ellen said, the profile manager(s) get an email.

Only the person who wrote it is supposed to delete it.  If you try, you get a HUGE warning banner!

Comments

Re notice of comments - Do people on the Trusted List (who are not profile managers) get notified if a comment is posted?

Re deletion - As has been discussed before on G2G, the warning about deleting comments is too restrictive. Most comments probably become stale and should be deleted at some point - eg comments about merges that have already occurred or suggesting a change that has been incorporated. I think the guidance for deleting comments should be updated and needs to be much more nuanced.

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I like to keep the merge comments.  It shows why someone thought a merge should take place (even when it shouldn't).  It doesn't make the place look untidy - after all, as new comments come in, the old comments get pushed off the page anyway into a place you can't see unless you click 'More Comments' at the bottom.

I don't *think* Trusted List people get notifications.  I can't remember ever getting one, anyway.  It will just appear on your Wiki Genealogy Feed that a profile you are on the TL for has been merged.  The deed has already been done!

Answer 4

If the profile has a project box (like Puritan Great Migration), potentially everyone listed in google group project account, sees public comments. PGM has about 50 people in its google group who see the comments. Connecticut's google group has one (me).

I'll just mention that private messages sent to the Puritan Great Migration Project, also get seen by the entire google group, so its not very private.