FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

1. What is NowComment in a nutshell?
2. What documents can NowComment handle?
3. What's special about HTML web documents and Microsoft Word documents?
4. Why doesn't NowComment allow editing of documents?
5. Can NowComment handle graphics, animations, and embedded videos (multimedia objects)?
6. What group sizes are appropriate for NowComment?
7. Can NowComment be used with third-party user authentication systems?
8. Why are there word balloons in the document text?
9. Why is a Summary of Comment required?
10. Can you have conversations on specific words or phrases?

1. What are the advantages of the 2-Pane vs. Combined vs. Sorted views?
2. How do I limit who looks at or posts comments on my documents?
3. How can I include active hyperlinks?
4. Why can't I see all of the comments on a document?
5. What are tags used for?
6. How long should it take to upload a file?

The Basics

1. What is NowComment in a nutshell?
   NowComment is the most sophisticated group collaboration app available for discussion and annotation of online documents. Its many unique features include a user interface that encourages rich, in-depth conversations by showing threaded comments in context with the original document. Group members start or join conversations on whatever passages they find interesting and important, intellectually engaging in ways not possible in face-to-face class discussion.


2. What documents can NowComment handle?
   NowComment works best with HTML web pages and Microsoft Word documents (with all Track Changes edits and deletions accepted), but it accepts any documents whose text characters run left to right (including but not limited to English and Romance language documents) and whose text can be copy-and-pasted into a standard HTML text entry box.


3. What's special about HTML web documents and Microsoft Word documents?
   NowComment can break these documents down into sentences and preserve rich text formatting (e.g. bold, italics, underlining) and pictures. If you have a document that's neither Word-formatted (.doc, .docx, .rtf) nor HTML you can probably do a Save-As, or use a converter application, to get it into one of those formats. See our file upload hints page.
   
   
4. Why doesn't NowComment allow editing of documents?
   People are used to thinking of document collaboration in terms of editing, and for "right or wrong" things like noting punctuation and spelling errors it's great. With just a few people involved minor rewording suggestions usually work OK too. But discussing and debating complex ideas is a very different animal, one that doesn't lend itself to an editing approach. For example:
   
   

   A student workgroup collaborating on a group presentation has to explain why the group took the approach it did. Student #1 lays out seven reasons, but Student #2 thinks only four are compelling. In a collaborative editing environment she might cross out the three she disagrees with. What if Student #1 isn't convinced; does he reverse her edits as if she had never made them, or does he put them back in as new text? Neither approach is great, and this 2-student case is the most basic. Things gets more complicated and contentious when there are 5, 10, 25, or 100 members of the group who have different ideas about what stays and goes… and have their own suggestions about wording… and may have additional reasons to add to Student #1's initial seven.

   When sharing ideas in a group context, having one person unilaterally cross out or add in text is in practice very problematic — besides the galling interpersonal aspect, the document quickly becomes cluttered and incomprehensible when more than a few people are actively contributing their thoughts and deleting the contributions of others.
   
   NowComment is built for discussing complex and abstract intellectual issues where it's more a matter of sharing ideas and explaining perspective than of right vs. wrong. And for these kinds of documents, keeping the document clean and static is actually a big advantage. NowComment's approach builds understanding organically, by letting class/group members express their views, ask questions, get clarifications, raise objections, point out implications… all in a way that's respectful of others and keeps the base document clean and easy-to-read even with dozens or hundreds of active contributors.


5. Can NowComment handle graphics, animations, and embedded videos (multimedia objects)?
   Yes, they're treated as paragraphs and can be both displayed and commented upon. NowComment can handle both images (jpeg, png, gif, tif, and svg formats) and embedded audio/video that are copied from HTML pages; Microsoft Word can handle images but doesn't allow embedded video.


6. What group sizes are appropriate for NowComment?
   NowComment has been successfully tested with both very small groups (e.g. 4-5 people collaborating on writing projects) and large groups of 50+ users. There are no size limits per se; the software is designed to accommodate hundreds, even thousands, of readers commenting on a single document.


7. Can NowComment be used with third-party user authentication systems?
   NowComment is standards-compliant and should play well with other systems. The University of Virginia (UVA) integrated NowComment into its Sakai Learning Management System (LMS) using Shibboleth to authenticate users, and that integration went very smoothly.


8. Why are there word balloons in the document text?
   Word balloons mean that there are existing conversations; the number of comments is given inside the balloon. Paragraph balloons are square and appear at the end of the first line of a commented paragraph. Sentence balloons appear at the end of a commented sentence. Clicking on a word balloon scrolls the screen and highlights the conversations already underway on that passage, image, or embedded video. Note: General comments about the document as a whole appear at the end of the document.


9. Why is a Summary of Comment required?
   Clear summaries take just a few seconds to write but help group members skim to find the comments most relevant to them (especially in the default 2-Pane view). This minimizes information overload for documents with lots of comments.


10. Can you have conversations on specific words or phrases?
    In effect, yes. Just start a new conversation with that word or phrase at the beginning of the Summary Line (we suggest using quotation marks to make it stand out).

Reading and Adding Comments

1. What are the advantages of the 2-pane vs. Combined vs. Sorted views?
   • 2-Pane: The comments, though easily available to you by clicking the word balloons, are off to the right so you can read the document with minimal distraction.
   • Combined: Both the text and all the comments are together in one window; no clicking is needed to see all the comments, you just need to scroll. This view is good if you know you want to read all the comments and are already very familiar with the document (i.e. so all the comments won't make you lose the thread of what the document is saying). Combined is also good when documents have many columns of tabular data.
   • Sorted: Looks like 2-Pane, but the comments show in the order that you specify (sorted by commenters' Last Name or First Name, by comment Date, or by the Tag given) rather than based on what part of the document the comment was made about. You can use the Name sort feature to grade/assess each person's contributions to the discussion.
   
   
2. How do I limit who looks at or posts comments on my documents?
   Unless you specifically change from Private Document (the default when uploading) to Public Document, only people or Groups you explicitly share the document with will be able to see it or comment on it.


3. How can I link to other documents using hyperlinks?
   
   1. In the body of a NowComment comment a URL that starts with http:// or https:// will be clickable.
   2. In the Summary Line a URL will show but won't be clickable.
   3. In a document you want to upload to NowComment:
   
   
   • HTML copy-and-paste upload — insert this HTML tag into the document:
     
     <a href="url">displaywords</a>
     
     where url is the destination web page address and displaywords are the word(s) users will click on to go there.
   
   
   • Microsoft Word document — before uploading to NowComment, edit the document in Word and use Word's own Insert Hyperlink menu choice to specify both the URL and the display words.
   
   
4. Why can't I see all the comments on a document?
   The document owner (uploader) can control whether, or as of what date, others who are invited to the document can see the comments made by other invitees (the document owner can always see all the document comments). This may be the case for your document, check with the document owner.


5. What are tags used for?
   Both documents and comments can be given tags (keywords) to make them easier for others to find. Tags can be free form, or your group can come up with preset categories, e.g. a writing class may want to categorize comments as grammar, style, or content… or a political science class might want to tag all comments made by Democrats vs. Independents vs. Republicans so they can be sorted that way). Administrators and executives might want to see comments tagged/sorted as financial, management, marketing, or other.


6. How long should it take to upload a file?
   The speed of your Internet connection (broadband upload speeds are usually slower than download speeds) and the file size are the main, but not the only, factors. Network congestion on occasion can dramatically slow Internet throughput… and while our server can handle many uploading documents at a time, it's possible that it could become overloaded. It never hurts to wait a minute or two and then retry the upload if you run into a problem.

NowComment Compared to Other Tools

Using any desktop PC application (like Microsoft Word) to circulate files for commenting has four inherent disadvantages:

1. Inefficiency: Someone has to play the role of editor to gather and organize all the comment from each person's file (and it's even worse if no one takes this role, because then each person has to read everyone else's drafts!)
2. Redundancy: Since no one knows what their peers have already said you get lots of redundant comments, a big waste of time for both the writers and all the readers.
3. Delays seeing new comments: The group's project/goal is delayed because no one sees anyone else's comments until they get compiled (a really big problem if the compilation has to wait until everyone turns their comments in).
4. Version control problems: If any group members turn in their comments late, after a new draft based on the on-time comments has been created, then integrating comments made on the old draft with the current draft can be a nightmare.

NowComment eliminates all these problems: you can ensure that people are always commenting on the current version, and their comments appear right away for everyone to see (so unless you're using NowComment to draft a consensus next draft, no one ever has to compile the responses!).

1. Microsoft Word
   Though Word has powerful collaborative editing capabilities (Track Changes), its document commenting capabilities are limited, and it can't handle true discussion (organization of comments into threaded conversations). None of its collaboration capabilities scale well beyond more than a few people; the screens get too cluttered and it's hard to grasp who's saying what.


2. Blogs
   Blogs let writers create new online documents; reader comments on those documents are not necessarily important or even allowed. NowComment is specifically designed to elicit and organize reader comments. You can use NowComment very effectively as a super blog for in-depth discussion of new documents, but you can also use it to discuss books, news and journal articles, essays, and other existing documents.


3. Wikis
   Wikis let anyone change the content of a document. NowComment lets you comment on, but not change, a document.


4. Google Docs/Drive
   Google Docs (now Drive) allows you to share documents with others, but its discussion capabilities are limited. Like Word, its screen gets crowded and disorganized when there are more than a few comments… and in addition, having lots of highlighted comments makes the original document very hard to read.


5. Sticky Note programs
   Many programs let you insert sticky notes on a document to show comments. None of the ones we've seen worked well when more than a few people were making comments; the screen gets very cluttered, the notes aren't easily organized into coherent conversations, and there aren't good (if any) sorting capabilities. NowComment organizes and sorts comments without cluttering the screen.

Software Issues