The never-ending quest to make WEbook the destination for writing bliss marches on! This month, we’re pleased to announce a bevy of new features—many of which were suggested by WEbookers like you! My favorite is the new larger feedback window with a snazzy word count bar. Perhaps our greatest single request from the WEbook community is the need for more feedback. We all love to get comments like, “Awesome! Loved it! The best thing since sliced Shakespeare!” But the truth is, feedback that offers nothing but praise or criticism is not really feedback at all.
To encourage deeper reviews—true feedback—we thought a word-count bar might help. Here’s how it works: The orange bar tracks the word count of your review. If you want to give someone a quick, gut reaction to their work, leave a “comment”—anything between one word (“Groovalicious!”) and 149 words. When you reach 150 words, the bar glows green like a light saber. Congratulations! You have officially left a piece of WEbook-sanctioned, honest-to-goodness “feedback.” Want to really go the distance? Keep typing. When you hit 250+ word territory, you have entered the hallowed realm of the “critique.” Critiques are like diamonds: multi-faceted, crystal-clear, harder-than-nails, rare, and valuable. Your reviewee will appreciate your effort; WEbook will notice it as well. (Click here for more on this.)
The second improvement to WEbook’s feedback process is a blue link underneath each review, with the words: “Was this feedback helpful? Leave a compliment.” When you receive a comment, feedback, or critique, take a moment to think about whether the review is truly brilliant, enlightening, in-depth, motivating, helpful, or unique. If so, click on through to the feedback compliment buttons and give the review its props. If not, simply move on to the next piece of feedback.
We’ve also enabled Facebook Connect for new users. What does this mean? If you’re registering to WEbook for the first time, you can do it through your Facebook account. For those of you already registered with us, stick with the regular login, as Facebook Connect will prompt you to start a new account.
Last, and another popular request from the WEbook hive, you can now remove chapters from continuous single-author projects. So edit away, ladies and gents, we won’t stop ya!
Have more suggestions? Awesome. Click here to send us your latest and greatest.
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While I'm all for enhancements, and it's great to hear of such active involvement in improving the site, I'm not so sure I am all for the new 'word count bar' feature in feedback boxes. It would be great it everyone's comments were useful and insightful, and there should be encouragement for those who respond to the work of others in such fashion. But not everyone is inclined or equipped to write print-worthy feedback to everything they read, and those who like to fire off their short-but-sweet quips will likely be deterred from doing so when they see the results of the word count bar in accordance with what they've typed, especially when the bar isn't the same color across the board. I was just posting a comment to a story when I encountered this count bar for the first time: I was put off by the fact that it wasn't considered a "comment" for a few minutes of writing; indeed, after posting 200+ words in the comment, my feedback still never acheived the elite status of being a "critique"! I almost stopped a few times and gave up on my entry, thinking it wouldn't be considered good enough or worthwhile.
Some people can say a lot, succinctly, with just a few words. Others will only say a few words, no matter how much it is that they really have to say. And sometimes, getting a "Great!" or "I hate it!" is better than nothing at all.
INRE: Facebook Connect: any added benefit if you're already a member of both Facebook and WEbook?
Posted by: John | June 15, 2009 at 01:16 PM
While I agree with the above observation I like the word count bar, cause it's quite simply FUN.
Posted by: Glenn | June 30, 2009 at 03:36 AM