Alison Bechdel is the author of the Dykes to Watch out For webcomic. One of the characters has three simple and apparently obvious rules to decide whether she wants to see a movie. These are known as the Bechdel Test, and look for movies that:
- have two female characters
- who talk to each other
- about something other than a man
They may sound obvious, but popular movies fail the test on a regular basis.
The same applies to communities led by a figurehead, such as blogs or fan pages.
Stage Zero happens when there are no participants. It’s a sad place.
Stage One happens when there are some participants who leave comments and interact with the figurehead, but mostly ignore each other.
Stage Two happens when the participants start interacting.
Stage Three happens when the participants, still interacting with each other, start going off-topic and discuss things beyond the original purpose of the community.
Most communities get to Stage One. Yet, even as they get hundreds of participants, getting them to interact together is harder. Hundreds of people go write “Great Post! I completely agree with you!” in the comments section of every article on 10k-subscriber blogs because this gets them some free back links. It takes a lot of spine and insight to actually write something original, contradict the author on his own blog or *shudder* go post on a brand new blog with only a few subscribers.
This blog is still in Stage One. I think Stage Two is a nice place to be, and my regular posters seem to be clever and decisive enough to go beyond the “Great Post! I completely agree with you!” wall. Stage Three would be even better 
Hi. I'm Victor Nicollet,
J’ai été un peu déçu de voir que l’auteur de la page sur le Bedchel Test ne prend pas la peine de faire le test sur quelques films historiques. Au hasard, *Ma Nuit chez Maud*, *Le Sept Samourai*, *Sur les Quais*, *Citizen Kane*, *Douze Hommes en colère*. Hum, il me semble qu’il y a un problème.
Ah, tiens, si, my bad. Je n’étais pas descendu jusqu’en bas de la page. Ce test échoue à remplir mes critères de pertinence, de fait.
I didn’t read former comments (I usually – always pleasantly – read your blog via RSS), but I think the kind of your posts doesn’t really help to have interactions between participants. You never speak about an open problem or about something that usually lead to debating. As far as I’m concerned, maybe it’s for that reason that I like reading them (I don’t feel obliged to go on the site to read comments
)
@Immae : I kind of already figured you were the lurker type! I do my best to get things wrong in my articles, just so that people can tell me I’m wrong (being wrong has excellent troll value). I guess I don’t get them wrong enough
I’m considering writing a weekly “request for comments” post to help stir up the mayonnaise. What do you say?
Great post!
@Iftah : don’t worry; we will deal with your rebel friends soon enough.
Sorry about that one above, couldn’t resist.
In my experience with Articles talk-backs and forums usually the most heated conversations happen when people disagree. I think you wouldn’t want these threads and your topics don’t generate strong disagreements.
As Immae said, open problem can lead to interesting discussions, the riddles are a good open problem but they don’t promote sharing ideas.
I don’t have an idea at the moment to help with moving you to stage 2… I’ll let you know if I think of something.
Oups only just remembered I posted a comment on your website (any way to be informed by mail of new comments when we post once? Ok maybe it doesn’t make sense until you come to stage 2 of community
).
) — It’s not a criticism, that’s why I like reading you. If you want debate, just give some angry/favourable opinion about Inception and people will start fighting one against each other (this corresponds to stage 2 right?). But you may in return lose your current public. Surely your readers will make their mind about something you wrote, but it will be too late: nobody will go back 10 posts to read/write about something you posted 3 weeks earlier. At best they will discuss with you in direct.
About being wrong: I won’t speak about bug report, code sharing… for that I guess someone else would post a comment if ever – Yes I’m a very bad lurker, I only read what I can get directly from my rss feed, which doesn’t include comments: since I read your posts less than a few hours after you post there is not very much to read there…
Now other posts. To debate about something, you need to have some opinion about it. If you write about something hardly anyone else thought before, there is no chance they may really debate about it (don’t mention troll
Other possibility? Repeat yourself
Mine has flirted briefly with Stage Two, but it’s largely Stage One. Actually, getting it to Stage One took a while. So, I’ve decided to enjoy that.
Thoughtful post that I’m delighted you were able to keep short (which isn’t easy), as well as introduce some links I’d never heard of before.
@Immae — your first comment caught my attention because I used to read favorite blogs in the RSS feed, but I missed out on the page changes, the visual identity of the blog, and the ability to scan the comments even if I had nothing to add (quite rare.) Then I found a Firefox add-on called Morning Coffee. It opens FF for me with my chosen sites each in a tab, so I can just open/read/open/read my way down the list… you might like that (many ways to change it up, like: open these on M/W/F, open those on weekends, etc.) So even if you don’t want to comment (or don’t want to feel obliged), you won’t miss out on the presentation.
But, as you mention in your follow-up comment — the conversation is much easier in blogs with the ‘reply to comment’ plug-in — @Nicollet, would you consider that? It’s easy, super useful, and is a great way to get to stage 4 community.
AND you need that plug-in check-box for “alert me to follow-up comments” which come to your email address so you can see what everyone says, including the blogger. @Nicollet, I’m surprised at you, you wanna get that, it’s a great way to let people know when you respond to a comment, they can read it and click-through to your post again, they can unsub anytime (through there should be an option to only receive for, say, 2 weeks without having to click-through to unsub, but I quibble.)
But guys — there’s lots of ways to foster discussion and relationship without it being debate, disagreement, or corrections… like, uh, like this! You write an intriguing post, sprinkle in a few odd bits (the Bechdel Test being one of them!), and give a humble call to action… and you’re missing out until you include the REPLY TO COMMENT option, and the GET FOLLOW-UP COMMENTS BY EMAIL (Naomi has both.)
Whoo-boy-howdy! Just you wait!
As for one-line comments? Just you wait, you’ll be wishing you’d never wished for anything more with me around ~ ha!
OH! One more thing! No, two more things!
1) There’s no reason a newish, intelligent blog like this needs to have comments moderated, in my wise and bossy opinion. Your spam filter can prevent anything you want from getting through; you always get an email when you get a new comment, so you can fire up and reply right away — the commenter feels trusted, heard, rewarded, and full of herse– er, eager to come back. Remove the moderation hold.
2) When you (a) add the REPLY TO COMMENT link and GET FOLLOW-UPS check box and (b) remove moderation so a more flowing conversation can happen, your comment numbers will rise because people won’t lump all replies in one comment. It’s find for you the Host to do so, like @Ifta: you’re right! and @Immae: You’re so funny! and @TheGirlPie You’re so right and funny! — that’s fine for the Blogger. But if you’d had the REPLY TO COMMENT link, my long comment above woulda been 3 separate comments… numbers DO matter when you’re growing a gang, er, community~!
Oh-oh! A third point: OH! And A fourth point! ALWAYS follow your commenters on Twitter — so get that “what’s your twitter name” plug-in for right below the comment box — (go see @Havi’s blog, http://FluentSelf.com — hers has it) — it’s a GREAT community builder.
AND your twitter name was hard to find, and I looked right at it in the upper right; you need to (please) put the blue bird and the “follow me” with your @handle, so we can discern if from your other link list on the right there…
Okay, lesson’s over — you can tell me to shut my pie-hole (in French, if you must) on twitter when you follow me~! (Oh! Fifth point! When you reward mouthy helpful commenters like, oh, say, Pink Girls Who Give Advice, not only do your other readers learn from that comment and see that you like that stuff so they’re more likely to add in a substantial way to the conversation, but then all the people who follow that person on twitter get to see that you think she’s great too, so they identify with you too, and you’ve just built a bridge to a buncha new people to come see your blog that the motormouth commented about~! Win-win-win!
I’m pooped — night all!
Hi there. When I started commenting on IttyBiz, I kind of expected commenters like you to come over here and invade my blog like rabbits invaded australia (hopefully without the “eradicate native life forms” part).
You bring up several interesting points. Two of them (holding up posts for moderation, and allowing threaded replies) are actually easy to solve. Well, almost : my theme did not support threaded replies, so I had to rewrite the comments system from scratch. Let’s hope I didn’t break anything!
The twitter-related parts are interesting, but I’m a notoriously late adopter as far as twitter goes. I’ll consider adding these in the future.
I’ll try to find the “follow comments by e-mail” option in WordPress, too.
Thank you for your feedback, it really means a lot to me! Take care.
You did a swell job, bravo!
The plugins for WP that I use for increasing community are:
“Subscribe To Comments” — Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. | Version 2.1.2 | By Mark Jaquith —
[Just type these titles into WP’s plugin finder, DL, install, and BAM! Instant conversations!
“CommentLuv” — Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
| Version 2.7.64 | By Andy Bailey
As for the Twitter stuff — it’s easy — most like the Tweet Meme plugin — that green button at the top (usually) or bottom of a post, that lets reader just click to tweet your post link (yay!)
“TweetMeme Retweet Button” — Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts. — Version 1.8.6 | By TweetMeme
(and in the sidebar):
“Twitter for WordPress” — Displays your public Twitter messages for all to read.|Version 1.9.7 | By Ricardo González
And in the comments form —
“WP Twitip ID” — Adds another field to the comment form to allow the user to include their twitter id. Version 1.1 | By Andy Bailey
And to highlight your twitter name, you can do what I did: make a Widget for the top of your side bar (above the Twitter feed) insert a small copy of your Avatar (you handsome devil) and an equally small twitter bird image that says “follow me” (google “image: twitter graphic for follow” to find some to choose from), or getjust the bird and add a label to the widget you-voice version of “let’s tweet up,” and make that label or image be a link to http://www.twitter.com/VictorNicollet and boom — more conversation in a new (but repeated) space — yay!
Thus concludes my bossy tutorial on How To Do Everything At Least As Well As I Do And Hopefully Much Better. (Please do not hire a thug to break my fingers, I’ll shut up now~!)
Hearing about the possibilities you considered, yet didn’t choose would have been a huge amount more helpful. This way we’d be experiencing more of your thought process as opposed to (just) the outcome