NowComment
2-Pane Combined
Comments:
Full Summaries Sorted

3 Easy Commenting Tips for New Users

These tips will have you using NowComment like a pro:

1. Write an Expressive “Summary of Comment” (Summary)

Each NowComment comment has a Summary that's meant to give your readers a short overview of your main point or points. It's limited to 255 characters, roughly 1-2 sentences. If everything you want to say fits in the Summary field then you don't need to put anything in the second field… but usually you'll want to say more, e.g. give some examples, provide explanatory details, identify interesting implications, etc. Put these elaborations into the optional “Full Comment” field, where you can write as much as you want!

Unlike email, don’t keep the same Summary when replying to someone; the Summary is for you to share your main points with the group.

See the Summaries of the comments on this amazing painting:

Raft of the Medusa painting

To comment at a particular point on an embedded YouTube or Vimeo video, pause the media player's progress indicator (a red circle for YouTube, a blue bar for Vimeo) at the desired point, click the “Add Comment” link on the blue toolbar above the video, and then choose the “at current time” option.

Note— you can still embed media players from a source other than YouTube (e.g. SoundCloud, Vimeo), but as of August 2016 you would just comment on it by clicking on the paragraph number and making a paragraph comment.

2. Different Conversations for Different Topics

An important NowComment feature is allowing multiple conversations on any sentence, paragraph, image, or video. To keep each conversation efficient and on-topic:

  • Reply to a comment when you want to continue that same topic
  • Start a new conversation (new thread) when you want to introduce a new topic

As an example, we'll make a few comments here about the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

fearful turkey at Thanksgiving time

Jessica's comment is about the tradition of eating a turkey. Since Tom's next comment is also about food, he replied to Jessica's comment (no change of topic). But Rachel's comment isn't about food, so she didn't click “Reply”; instead, she began a new conversation (by double clicking the text or the paragraph#).

3. Things to Avoid

  • Don't write your name or the paragraph# you're commenting on — the system adds both automatically.
  • Don't say who you're replying to — we automatically show the connection by indenting your comment below the comment you're replying to.
  • Don't use just a few words in your Summary to hint at your main idea(s); communicate them clearly with a good sentence or two. We repeat this from #1 because it's an important way to generate richer NowComment conversations!

DMU Timestamp: August 19, 2016 03:06





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Quickstart: Commenting and Sharing

How to Comment
  • Click icons on the left to see existing comments.
  • Desktop/Laptop: double-click any text, highlight a section of an image, or add a comment while a video is playing to start a new conversation.
    Tablet/Phone: single click then click on the "Start One" link (look right or below).
  • Click "Reply" on a comment to join the conversation.
How to Share Documents
  1. "Upload" a new document.
  2. "Invite" others to it.

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