Comments on: What Drives an Active Online Community?

By: ARDELL

ARDELL — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:19:55 +0000

Tony,

I couldn’t find a link to a blog on the site you linked to in your comment.

By: Tony Sena

Tony Sena — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 04:54:33 +0000

Hmm, guess I have a lot of work ahead of me as my most active blog post has 12 comments.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:57:28 +0000

Sniglet,

You’re definitely right that the market condition topics tend to generate a ton of comments, but in terms of what people visiting the site are looking for, the backend analytics tells me that market conditions information is only a small portion of what people want.

The vast majority of people coming to RCG are arrive after putting a term in google like moving to seattle, living in seattle, neighborhood terms, short-sale, FHA, etc, and I like to think that the bulk of them get sent to informative posts that go a long way to answering their questions without the need for them to comment.

My comment is less directed at you Sniglet, then a recognition that as much as most bloggers (myself included!) love to write posts that generate lots of comments, they are not necessarily indicative on any given post with how helpful we can be in providing quality real estate information!

By: Rhonda Porter

Rhonda Porter — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:21:55 +0000

There is no shortage of topics for real estate and mortgage these days!

By: Sniglet

Sniglet — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:28:24 +0000

For what it’s worth, I see that most of the long threads deal with the credit crunch and housing downturn. That seems to be a topic with a lot of resonance.

People just aren’t as interested in discussions about how great Puget Sound neighbourhoods are, how to stage homes, wondeful ways to upgrade your home, or other up-beat subjects.

I personally like this site for getting a perspective from industry professionals on bubble subjects.

Maybe you should re-name the site to “Seattle Bubble 2″.

By: kimh

kimh — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:42:55 +0000

Just a great list of writers that create well thought out posts which create lots of thoughtful comments. Nice list Dustin. Sometimes the comments make the post a better discussion for all.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:18:06 +0000

Nope… but I can look up the number of comments that people have left on the backend. It’d be a manual process to check everyone! And if they didn’t always leave comments using some common characteristic (name, email, URL or IP), then it’d make it much tougher.

By: Rhonda Porter

Rhonda Porter — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:28:03 +0000

Dustin, do you know who the most prolific commenters are at RCG?

By: Dustin

Dustin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:48:36 +0000

You better not try to get sarcastic with us Roger!

By: Roger Ingalls

Roger Ingalls — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:34:27 +0000

I’d like to add that the general atmosphere of “passionate, articulate civility” contributes to the success of this site.

This is not at all common on many sites that deal with controversial topics. Name calling and sarcasm seem to be the normal “lingua franca” of the blog world, even those with intelligent and literate commenters.

Way to set the tone!

Of course, I can THINK of some sarcastic comments regarding this post…..but, nah!