My How Times Have Changed.

byChazzBrown

532 followers

9 years ago

A while ago I stated with confidence that feedback was easier to give than comments. But now its just the opposite. The requirements for useful feedback are much stricter than those for a "good" comment.

Considering the purpose of a comment is to help the site you're posting to, the best comment is a question that you really want to know the answer to based on actually reading the page content.

This gives the WA site owner the opportunity to engage you and demonstrate his (or her) expertise at the same time. Piece of cake.

On the other hand two common types of feedback requests that I personally have trouble with are:

1. Give me feedback on my content - Because unlike a comment, feedback seems (to me) to require a much deeper understanding of the subject matter.
2. Give me feedback on my use of media - Because there's only a few things you can say about pictures, too many, not enough, move them to the right (or the left depending on your philosophy, selection is good, selection is not good. Unless you're the first one to provide feedback, someone else will have made the accurate observations. And observations that are a matter of taste are not really good feedback.

This important because one way or another someone is paying for your feedback. It might be in actual cash or it might be the exchange of their time providing feedback or comments. Unlike comments which you can review and reject as unsuitable, you are stuck with unsuitable feedback.

I had someone suggest that I could "do better" when giving me feedback on my site layout because I "only had one page."

Actually I had 5 pages and over 20 posts.