PUMA

Discussion: Reviews and Comments#

Two important aspects of working with literature are the processes of sharing it and of exchanging ideas and thoughts about it among colleagues. The discussion features are dedicated to the latter. They provide a forum to communicate thoughts about publications and web pages quickly to friends and colleagues using

• comments (text),
• reviews (star ratings + text),
• the typical thread structure of forums,
• anonymity and visibility settings to keep some discussions private or in your group and
• immediate availability on every post in PUMA.

Where can one discuss?#

On any page in PUMA with a post list (e. g. home), there is a link reading "discussion" right next to each post's copy link and a five-star-rating-icon below each post. Either leads to the discussion page of the web page or publication, that the post is about. Anyone (logged in) can discuss about any posted resource (web page or publication) even if they did not post it themselves! One must keep in mind, that several posts (e. g. from different users) can be about the same resource. Since the discussions are always about the resources (never about specific posts) the discussion links of such posts all lead to the same discussion.

A bookmark post with discussion link and star rating.

Posts with restricted visibility#

One can also discuss private posts, or posts that are visible only to certain groups or friends. However, if someone adds a comment or review to such a post, a copy of this post will be created, that is publicly visible. The copy does neither belong to the owner of the private post nor to the user who started the discussion. The new post simply has no owner and belongs to the system. In cases, where a copy would be created, a warning is issued before the user starts the discussion. To protect the owners privacy, private notes of the post will of cause not be copied.

How can one discuss?#

There are two ways to start a discussion or to add to one: reviews and comments. For both of them the user will have to be logged in. To write a review or comment to some resource, one has to find a post to that resource, visit its discussion page (click on the five-star-icon) and click the associated button: "create review" or "create comment".

Buttons to hide/show the discussion threads, and to choose review or comment.

Reviews

Reviews are designed to let you state your opinion. Each review contains a rating of up to five stars (half stars and also zero stars (for the worst case) are possible options). Additionally one can enter some text to explain the rating. Any user can add at most one review to a specific discussion. However, one can always edit or even delete own reviews.

Writing a review.

Comments

Comments are used to enter some text without assigning a rating. One can choose to comment on a posted resource directly or to reply to previous reviews or comments. Any user can comment as often as they like and edit or delete your comments at any time. To create a comment just click the blue create comment button. To comment in reply to another user's statement use the reply link below that statement.

Writing a comment.

Who can read it?#

Both comments and reviews come with two visibility settings. These settings are independent from the visibility settings of posts. However, they basically allow the same restrictions for dicussion contributions as there are for posts.

Anonymity

The first setting controls the visibility of the user's name. If anonymous is checked, nobody - except the author of the review/comment - will see who wrote the statement.

Visibility

The second option is similar to the viewable-for option during the regular posting and controls the visibility of the complete review or comment. You can set your statement viewable for anyone (public), for a group or for your friends (other) or only for yourself (private). The group setting is especially attractive for members of a working group which is represented as such in BibSonomy as it provides a forum to discuss inside that group.

Everyone may discuss everyone's posted resources. Thus, the fact that someone might own a post which has a rating, does not imply that they where the one rating it. Independently from the visibility setting, the star rating will be counted into the average rating, presented next to each resource.

What do the stars represent?#

When writing a review, the assigned stars represent the user's personal opinion about the publication or web page that is discussed. The stars displayed next to each post represent the average rating over all reviews to the post's resource. The average also includes the ratings of reviews that have a limited visibility (and thus might be invisible to some users). The discussion page of a resource also shows a distribution of all ratings.

The average rating and the rating distribution.

What is discussed and Who discussed What?#

The star icon next to each post tells you the current average rating and the number of reviews, the posted resource has received. In the bookmark post example above, the website has received two reviews, with an average rating of five out of five stars.

PUMA also offers several discussed post pages, listing posts that have been discussed recently by a specific user, by a member of a specific group or by any user in general.

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Categories: Advanced, Posting, Social Interaction