The Aussie Bloggers Forums and blog have been running for over 6 months now and are going from strength to strength. Todays stats are showing 32810 Posts in 2465 Topics by 687 Members!
Out of all the ‘extra curricula’ blogging activities I have participated in, being active in these forums has been the most satisfying and rewarding. It is a true community, where I feel right at home. I know I will always get an answer to any questions I may have because of the wide range of experience and knowledge of the members and their friendly, helpful attitude. This has been a pleasant surprise to me after searches for information have taken me to so many forum messages over the years that have no answers or responses that are downright rude and unhelpful.
Because it is not all serious blogging talk there is an avenue to get to know others better. The general chat forums are always buzzing, the Random Thoughts and How Was Your Day threads being particularly lively. Out of the blogging specific forums Blogging in General, Wordpress and Promote Your Blog have attracted the most responses.
A new feature on the Aussie Bloggers site announced today is the “Lazy Bloggers Post Generator” - give it a try when you are short of ideas or need to explain why you have not been posting:-)
I occasionally divert from the topic of blogging and take advantage of the power of blogging to spread the word about important causes. This one is especially dear to my heart as my third child, a son, is fully affected by Fragile X Syndrome. I am a carrier and had a 50/50 chance of passing carrier status or the full mutation on to each of my children, although I did not know this before he was born. I have not been able to trace any other instances of it in my family although I know my mother was a carrier too and either her mother or father passed this on to her.
I have written a post over at the Aussie Bloggers blog which gives more specific details on the Syndrome and will add links for more information at the end of the post so I will talk here more in terms of my experiences.
When my third son was born, I knew there was a problem almost right from the start. Although I was told that I should not compare his progress to that of my other children, who tended to be early in their milestones, my little Fraggle was behind in everything. On top of this he was allergic to so many foods, threw up constantly, had recurring ear infections, had problems with a turn in his eye and had the strange but endearing habits of flapping his hands when excited. He did not seem to have a lot of physical strength but could get into positions that would make a contortionist proud. At age 18 he is still so flexible that he chooses to sit watching TV with is chin propped up by his foot! We seemed to spend half our life visiting doctors when he was young. I know now that all of his symptoms added up to Fragile X Syndrome. He has an intellectual disability, autistic and ADD (attention deficit disorder) symptoms and sensory defensiveness particularly to smell and sound. Recently anxiety has become a problem. He loves the footy but cannot attend matches because of the crowd noise.
He was not diagnosed until he was nearly 4 because at that stage even pediatricians had not heard of it. Since then it has become more widely known thanks to the efforts of those involved in Fragile X groups and organizations around the world but there is still a way to go.
You may ask why you need to know about Fragile X if you do not have a family member or a friend’s family affected by it.
For a start you may know someone who is affected but this person does not have an intellectual disability. Affected girls may be average learners at school with a weakness in maths. They may be shy, have difficulty with eye contact and suffer from anxiety. Up to 6% of children diagnosed with Autism have Fragile X Syndrome. If a child has developmental and learning problems with autistic symptoms but not enough to be diagnosed with Autism it could well be Fragile X. Although there is no cure for Fragile X, as yet, the therapies and medications used to treat it can be very effective in reducing many of the problems associated with it. Diagnosis is very important.
You or someone you know may be a carrier, with none of the symptoms that characterise someone with the full mutation of the gene. The Fragile X gene seems to work overtime to compensate in carriers whereas the protein it produces is absent or in short supply in those affected.
Female carriers can have problems with irregular, infrequent menstrual cycles and early menopause and they have a greater chance of having twins. They have a higher tendency to suffer from anxiety, depression and shyness. As a carrier I am familiar with all of these, as was my mother. One in 256 women are carriers! Being aware of the reasons for it all, being treated appropriately and making some lifestyle changes made a huge difference to me. I read last week about a study showing that Fragile X can result in sleep problems because of a lack of a Circadian Rhythm. I am not sure if this applies to carriers too but it has always been the case with me. Working from home allows me to not have to worry about not having a sleep pattern. It comes in very useful when building web pages for overseas clients and I can converse with them during their working hours
Older male carriers have a high incidence of a condition called FXTAS (Fragile X Associated Tremors). If they are unaware that they are carriers this is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease.
I have started a Fragile X group on YouTube to gather together Fragile X videos made by professionals and families of people with Fragile X Syndrome. Here is one of my favorites:
There are quite a number of parents of children with Fragile X blogging - you can find some of them via the Fragile X Webring and on the blogrolls of these sites.
I would not normally ask this but please consider informing as many people as you can either about this post (or a Fragile X Site) to help this awareness day is be successful.
Entrecard has just joined forces with SezWho. “SezWhat?” you may be saying - I will explain what it is later in the post but firstly want to talk about Entrecard itself and why this partnership may be very useful to bloggers.
Entrecard has been a great way of bringing visitors to blogs and creating a means for members to get known but it has fallen short in producing significantly extra comments and expanding individual blog’s reader communities. Entrecard has always had higher aims, with goals of bringing not only traffic but also audiences, readership and community participation. I agree with Graeme, the mastermind behind Entrecard, when he says that “Commenting is the second most important thing for you to do after writing quality posts. It was due to his aim to use “The same credits that power our culture responsible for millions of blogger-to-blogger visits each week … to help power a culture that comments on posts as well” that has resulted in the partnership with SezWho.
SezWho is a commenting/comment rating tool, which calls itself a profiling service and engagement platform. It creates a ‘profile’ for your commenters; hovering over their profile image or “check me out” link brings up a box which shows you the latest comments they have made and their SezWho ratings. It allows you to rate posts and the the comments and follow comments via RSS. If you are not registered or logged in when rating then the rating will be processed as anonymous but this has much less impact on member reputation scores. You do not have to have your own site to register with SezWho.
Its use is aimed at giving highly rated members “web-wide recognition for their insights and expertise”, “thought leadership”, and an increase in traffic. The theory is that the number and quality of comments on your blog will grow.
The Entrecard connection is that credits are awarded to members who comment on SezWho enabled sites. The amount of credits given is based on how highly the comment is rated by those who vote on it - ranging from 1 to 10 Entrecard credits. The idea is that quality comments gain the most, quick meaningless comments left merely for backlinks and spam comments will luck out.
will give SezWho users who receive ratings of 4 stars or more with credits to advertise on its network of blogs. This is an interesting approach, as it connects reputation with a direct reward.
How to integrate SezWho with your site (currently supported platforms are WordPress versions up to 2.6 (2.6 is beta still), Movable Type, Blogger, Drupal and phpBB):
Wordpress - download and intall the SezWho plugin by upload to your plugin folder, activate it. Then enter the blog id sent to you with your registration confirmation email in the SezWho plugin’s setup.
Blogger - add the provided code to a HTML/Javascript page element.
You can view your own profile on your SezWho page:
Colin must lead thoughts to better places than I do
As I have only just installed the plugin I do not have any ratings, I do have ‘Star Power’ of 2.5 as this “community ranking” is not purely based on ratings?
Advantages
If this new system takes off and more Entrecarders do comment, rather than merely dropping on you, your blogs bounce rate will improve.
SezWho does not host any site content. All published and user-supplied content remains on - and is controlled by - the original site. It does not make off with your comments like some similar programs do.
Backlinks are created for yourself and commenters.
If you are an extraordinary commenter, a thought leader among bloggers, then your reputation will spread far and wide. If you are average then it may not make any difference to you, although I am sure the word will get round if particular blogs have generous comment ratings. I am open to that word :-). In my case I am sure I will not want to favor one regular commenter over another so will rate them all well, just because I am pleased to see them here. If you are new then I should imagine that I will vary my ratings although I love my comments so much that no doubt I will be generous - it will most likely depend on the mood I am in and if you are using a name that includes such words as casino. (my jury is still out with regards to the keyword luv plugin but I will save that for another post)
Disadvantages
Receiving low ratings could lead you to have less confidence in your writing, even though it may be that your particular commenters do not want to use the system.
It could be looked upon as bribing people to comment *
If you write quality posts you are going to get plenty of comments anyway (I do not believe this always to be the case as it depends on your type of blog and readership)
Adding to your workload by commenting on blogs just for your ratings is yet another way to divert you from writing and concentrating on your own readers.
* Entrecard + SezWho = Meh on Monkey Fables and Tales which talks less favorably about SezWho and not wanting to “bribe” people to comment. The 50+ comments on the post show agreement with this view.
Entrecard Encouraging Comments with SezWho
Entrecard has just joined forces with SezWho. “SezWhat?” you may be saying - I will explain what it is later in the post but firstly want to talk about Entrecard itself and why this partnership may be very useful to bloggers.
Entrecard has been a great way of bringing visitors to blogs and creating a means for members to get known but it has fallen short in producing significantly extra comments and expanding individual blog’s reader communities. Entrecard has always had higher aims, with goals of bringing not only traffic but also audiences, readership and community participation. I agree with Graeme, the mastermind behind Entrecard, when he says that “Commenting is the second most important thing for you to do after writing quality posts. It was due to his aim to use “The same credits that power our culture responsible for millions of blogger-to-blogger visits each week … to help power a culture that comments on posts as well” that has resulted in the partnership with SezWho.
Now on to SezWho itself:
SezWho is a commenting/comment rating tool, which calls itself a profiling service and engagement platform. It creates a ‘profile’ for your commenters; hovering over their profile image or “check me out” link brings up a box which shows you the latest comments they have made and their SezWho ratings. It allows you to rate posts and the the comments and follow comments via RSS. If you are not registered or logged in when rating then the rating will be processed as anonymous but this has much less impact on member reputation scores. You do not have to have your own site to register with SezWho.
The Profile that pops up for Colin Campbell’s comments.
Its use is aimed at giving highly rated members “web-wide recognition for their insights and expertise”, “thought leadership”, and an increase in traffic. The theory is that the number and quality of comments on your blog will grow.
The Entrecard connection is that credits are awarded to members who comment on SezWho enabled sites. The amount of credits given is based on how highly the comment is rated by those who vote on it - ranging from 1 to 10 Entrecard credits. The idea is that quality comments gain the most, quick meaningless comments left merely for backlinks and spam comments will luck out.
will give SezWho users who receive ratings of 4 stars or more with credits to advertise on its network of blogs. This is an interesting approach, as it connects reputation with a direct reward.
How to integrate SezWho with your site (currently supported platforms are WordPress versions up to 2.6 (2.6 is beta still), Movable Type, Blogger, Drupal and phpBB):
You can view your own profile on your SezWho page:
Colin must lead thoughts to better places than I do
As I have only just installed the plugin I do not have any ratings, I do have ‘Star Power’ of 2.5 as this “community ranking” is not purely based on ratings?
Advantages
Disadvantages
Reading:
To give you an opportunity to try out SezWho on this site I am will pose some questions.
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