NGRF Site News

We've just made a fairly big upgrade in the way the NGRF site supports comments and discussion. Many members were having a hard time participating because they could not create their own discussions or add links and attachments to their comments.

As the first part of a 3-month project to enhance the interactivity and community-building features of the NGRF site, we've added shared weblogs:

NGRF community comments

This is a place for comments and discussion about the NGRF site by its members. Everyone who is logged in can add comments and participate in discussions. Comments that members add using the 'Add a comment' button in the site's pages will be posted as an entry to this shared weblog.

Talking About Guidance

This is a group discussion area in which members of the NGRF site can create and participate in discussions about the issues that concern them. All members can post here and participate in any discussions. This is a really good place to start if you want to pose a question or start a discussion of your own. Please don't be inhibited, all contributions welcome.

NGRF Site Editors' Weblog

This area is where the NGRF editorial team members will be developing ideas about how to make the site into the best possible resource for its users. Only members of the editorial team can start new discussions here, but all members of the site can view and respond to any of the contributions posted by the editorial team. If you want to comment on the site technology and structure, rather than its content, please do so here. You will be talking directly to the editorial team and they are really keen to have your feedback.

NGRF Site News

This is for news about the NGRF site. Members of the editorial team can post to this weblog. All members of the site can participate in discussions of entries there.

Note that the 'Add a comment' feature is now also based on the weblogs. Adding a comment anywhere on the site automatically posts a new entry to 'NGRF Community Comments', which includes a link back to the page that the comment is about. Because of a little piece of internet magic called 'trackback', the pages can display the title and lead-in (summary) for any weblog entry or discussion item which includes a link to it. This is true even if the weblog entry is on another site. (for an example, see this article by Alan Brown)

We will be posting additional materials explaining how to use the new features, and giving some hints about powerful new tools that can be used to track the content of the site and to add your own content. Watch this space!

Thanks to all our members for bearing with us during the big transition in the way interactivity works in the NGRF site. We've been working veery hard to improve the clarity of the interfaces in response to user feedback.

We've just added some 'tips' which appear just below each entry. These explain what the 'permalink' and 'Discussion' links are for. We'll be adding more helpful tips and how-tos over the next week. We're also working on making the actions for replying etc more streamlined.