Should it be a blog post or a discussion?

Blog
#1

Dear SFN members,


I was recently asked what the guidelines are for blogging on SFN, ie whether one should write a blog post or a discussion thread. So I will attempt to lay down some guidelines for that here.


Roughly speaking use a discussion to ask a question and a blog post to express your point of view or share your thoughts on something.


Blog posts will be automatically sent to the SFN Facebook page, and as such they are moderated, ie they require approval from an administrator before they will go live.


If they appear to be more suited to a discussion thread they probably won't be approved. For example. If you write a blog post entitled 'What are the dates of public holidays in France this year'. It would be more suited to the discussion threads. Whereas, if you wrote a post entitled 'I love how many public holidays there are in France this year' it would be fine as a blog post.


A blog post will also need some content, a single line or two and a link to somewhere else won't do it.


As always applies, commercial links to your own enterprises within any of your posts will also be declined.


Lastly if your blog post contravenes Facebook terms and conditions it won't fly either, due to them being automatically syndicated there.


Here is good example of a discussion thread http://www.survivefrance.com/forum/topics/english-speaking-lawyer


and a blog post http://www.survivefrance.com/profiles/blogs/taxing-times


There are exemptions to these guidelines and sometimes your blog post might get approved when it should have been a discussion if an administrator deems it to be of sufficient interest to the community as a whole.


Thanks, hope that helps!


Get blogging, or discussing!


James

#2

Replying to individual posts is not available in blogs, that is a feature used in discussion posts only.

More on that here

#3

Not sure if this useful or not. Other forums I have used have a quote feature. So the replier "quotes" the post he is replying to specifically. Also he/she has the ability to edit how much of the quote to use. This way the sequence of posts is uninterrupted and easy to follow.

Just a thought....

#4

Thanks for putting this up again James, it sure has been 'untidy' at times recently.

#5

I'm another one who finds it frustrating reading a multi-page thread I haven't seen before:

having to scroll down to the bottom of the introductory page,

select the last page,

scroll to the bottom of that page, then start reading the posts scrolling up to the top of the next one ( and possibly having to scroll down through it if it's a long individual post! ),

scroll to the bottom of the page again to select the

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Attach files (limit: 7MB)

‹ Previous button,

and repeat the procedure as often as necessary.

To save a lot of the scrolling, would it be possible to put the page select buttons at the top of the section of responses as well as at the bottom of the page?

I do like the feature that allows you to add your feedback directly below an existing post, rather than only at the top-or-bottom of the thread.

Wish everything was in "oldest-first" order, but I don't know if it would be possible to change it now, even if the Management wanted to... (or could be persuaded to...). That way, if you only want to read the newest post, you'd just skip straight to the last page.

#6

Ditto Kathleen, I too would read much more here (I love this site....thankyou James and Catherine!), but give up due to speed at which I can do that for the below? (above?) post!!! :-)

#7

I too have beeen meaning for some time to ask about the order in which some posts appear but being the world champion procrastinator hadn't got around to it.

I much prefer reading older posts first, (seems more logical to me as many people comment on previous posts further up/down the thread), but sometimes it's difficult to follow in order. If I start off at the last page with the older posts when I move on to the previous page the order has often become confused. I have on occasion given up entirely on an interesting thread because it's so mixed up. Could not all of the posts be older to newer? In addition, it would be helpful if the time was included on older posts rather than just the day of the week.

#8

Neither are dumb questions Steve.

Blog posts have newest comments at the top of the page right beneath the post itself, and you cannot reply to an individual comment, you are commenting on the blog post itself.

Discussion threads have the oldest post at the top and all subsequent posts beneath, you also have the ability to reply to an individual comment anywhere in the thread.

So effectively you're replying to the original poster in a blog and potentially discussing with anyone in a discussion thread.

Clear as mud I know, hope that helps!

James

#9

Thank you = I had been wondering but figured it was too dumb a question to ask.

Here's one that I am sure is dumb but still throws me. Whats the order that posts are sorted in? It feels logical that replies are under the original question but is it most recent at the front or at the back of multi-page ones

#10

That clears that up nicely - was wondering about that ;-D