It would be nice if participants could follow each other or “watch” the activity stream of certain users.

http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/06/10/enhancing-citizen-participation-in-decision-making/comment-page-1/#comment-9460

If that’s the case, it should be fairly easy to expose those to the users.

2. The site is overwhelmed with people who have no idea what the site is for. Most of them, across the board, have nothing better to do than tell their version of why they think Obama’s birth certificate was fake or some other birth certificate related issue. I flag these posts because according to the terms of use, they are “off-topic,” as a discussion of someone’s opinion of Obama’s birth certificate has nothing to do with defining transparency or developing transparency principles, but the reviewers seem to let the endless birth certificate comments stay, and as a result, whenever I made a post, the birthers would flag it and give it a pile of negative votes, regardless of my topic.
There is only one remedy that I can see to this problem.
a) Before a person comments, they should be required to select a comment category from a drop-down list. One of the drop-down categories should be “other.” If it is not a transparency definition or transparency principle, the person will need to select “other” and it will take the person to a seperate page where they can post about birth certificates with other birthers to their heart’s delight.
b) Also, when you click on the “post comment” button or its equivalent, there should be something that pops up that says, “Is this a (insert here the dropdown selection)?” For example, if before the post began, the poster selected “transparency definition” from the dropdown menu, the confirming question before the post is made visible should ask the poster, “Is this a transparency defintion you are posting?” If they click “no,” that should cancel the comment.
Thank you for the opportunity to make these suggestions.

Registration – add
- Form should indicate what will appear on messages – name or user name.
- CAPTCHA buttons should be labeled (they do have mouseovers – not sure those were there earlier, or that it is sufficient); also, if the CAPTCHA code should be refreshed after an error message, this (and how to do it) should be included in that message along with the instruction to use your “browsers” back button – at least that seemed to help when I was having this problem!

User profile
4. OK, but in Phase 1 I found the voting records excessive and inconsistent.

Commenting
5. Very important.
6. Rather than limiting number of characters, which I think could be a red flag, how about cutoffs with “read the rest…” links, as in the OSTP blog?

Navigation
10. Very important.
11. Recently added comments: add access to a list of “New since your last visit,” perhaps allowing users to sort into new vs. reply comments.
14. “Most highly voted” is questionable, especially in discussions with so few participants and non-rigorous recruitment.

Add:
- In discussions with more than 2 pages, link to “page 1,” “page 2,” etc., not just older vs. more recent.
- Make sure “reload” and messages about “exiting this site” are operating properly.
- Add boring “< to top” buttons.

Notifications – Very important for developing interactions

Comment voting
17 – 19. Very important. I would like to see some discussion of voting, though. I think I understand the attractions, but am concerned about the tradeoffs.

Moderation
22. Reword to acknowledge the various stages, e.g.: When a comment has been flagged by participants and is awaiting moderation, or afterwards, if a moderator has determined that it should be permanently removed due to a violation of the Terms of Participation, leave a note that explains and, after permanent removal, references the type of violation and links to the Terms of Participation. (Since many participants in Phase II, discussion 1 felt that “they” had removed, hidden, etc. a message, I would suggest including a phrase e.g. “flagged by one or more participants; removed due to .…” in the note.)

Add:
- Messages returned by moderators should go back to their original place in the list of comments.
- Clear, easy to find statements of policies regarding when messages will be shrunk or deleted, how the deletion process works, and where to find flagged messages are essential.
- Clarify the use of flagging to indicate duplicate posts; if this is an acceptable use, state this clearly in the Terms of Participation.
- Create more focus on discussion questions – for example:
– continue staff participation
– state questions simply; set off with color; give nuances beneath this frame.
– consider adding a link/popup on comment submission forms: “View discussion questions.”

General
24. FAQs – there is the Guide (http://blog.ostp.gov/guide-to-using-this-blog/); specific details might be helpful, and since “FAQs” is recognizable and short, that may be a better name, but I think one clear information link is better than two. Add this to the links at the top and bottom of each Web page! Might be formatted as short points with links to “Read more.”

26. Search – Yes! This point might appear in your list under Navigation?

27. Make e-mail address(es) for mechanical problems more obvious. (The first place I saw the “webmaster@” address was in the unfortunate messages about leaving the site; I’ve now seen it again, in the Terms of Participation.)

27. Weekends: If the site cannot be maintained on weekends, I would go as far as refusing comments (sending an e-mail to users who try to message). The problems on the first weekend of Phase II (discussion 1) made some users needlessly angry and suspicious.

For the record, some of the features that were not working properly at that time: a “reply” to a post sometimes came up at the end of the page; messages did not always post (when this happened to me on Sunday evening, I wanted to avoid a duplicate post, so I sent it to the “Contact us” address; it was posted on Monday); CAPTCHA error messages seemed to become increasingly frequent (for me, 3 on Sunday as opposed to 0 earlier). Also, moderation of flagged messages was on hold, I believe.