The Use Of Vocal's Comments And Insights

Introduction

A while back Vocal introduced Insights followed by Comments these are my latest observations on these two things.

Insights

When they came in it was a good way of showing what you thought of a creator's story, although the only way you could express dislike was by not leaving any insights at all. This was an upgrade to The Vocal Likes/Hearts which we still have.

While insights were the first way we could interact with other creators' stories on Vocal, the fact that the choices were set by Vocal was a definite limitation and did annoy some people, but I thought it was a good idea but needed some additional free-form options.

Today many people do not use Vocal Insights and so are they something that maybe should be removed. I am one of the people who still almost always leaves an insight rating, because I think it is good to come into a story and see how someone has rated your story.

Another slight issue is that insights, like Vocal Hearts, are anonymous so you do not know who has rated your story and they do not know that you have rated their stories.

But then we got

Vocal Comments

Creators had been leaving comments and having discussions about stories in the various Facebook Groups but these were not directly connected to the Stories.

Vocal gave us Comments and we could see who had read our stories and left some feedback. At first, this was seen as an addition to Insights but it seems that Insights is now a few keystrokes too far for many and is ignored by most Creators.

Comments allow Creators a lot more flexibility in how they review a story whereas the Insights are fixed. I see them as a linked combination, but others have dispensed with Insights and maybe Vocal should as well, as it has served its purpose.

This is a piece I wrote on how Comments can enhance our stories by making the whole experience an evolving process:

Comments have been a great Vocal addition to our stories, but it is still good to see comments in the Vocal Facebook Groups as well as they also allow non-Vocal members an opportunity to interact with Creators.

A couple of issues that have come from allowing comments are abusive comments, spam, and link bombing but thankfully these seem to be dropping off, and Vocal generally deals with problem posts although we still cannot block abusive Vocal Creators. It is good that comments are restricted to Vocal Creators although people can set up non-active profiles to allow them to comment which is great for friends and family but does allow abusers into the system.

Conclusion

I still see Insights and Comments as a useful combination but I see why some Creators have discarded Insights, though I haven't. If I think a story is Outstanding I certainly let people know via Insights and Comments.

Sometimes I wish I could dropand image or screenshot into the comments, but we are limited to text, and given that sometimes we are hit by abusive comments, maybe the fact we can't include images is a good thing.

I do feel that Vocal is continually improving, and this does help bring the community a little closer together (though I do wish we could properly filter notifications) but the Comments have actually allowed me to make new Vocal friends who are not on Facebook or other Social Media platforms.

So keep commenting and maybe even drop the odd Insight in there, I think these are especially good for new creators (along with small tips), but seeing that someone has marked your story as Outstanding can give you a great lift, it still does for me.

Thank you so much for reading .