User blog comment:Nduke/Ideas to Promote the Wiki/@comment-1815989-20121115200456/@comment-1874924-20121118015501

Expanding on Toad's comments, I think the single most effective thing we could do to make the wiki look better to newcomers (with the possible exception of behaving on chat) is to give more feedback on the stories we read and--no less importantly--put those comments on the stories' talk pages. I understand that some people find it easier to give feedback on chat, but that should be seen as a supplement, not a replacement. The problems with giving feedback on chat are:


 * 1) It doesn't show up on the Activity Feed, and so doesn't show newcomers how active this wiki really is;
 * 2) Chat, by its very nature, doesn't encourage detailed commentary unless the reader and writer actually get into a conversation about it; and
 * 3) The comments are not preserved for future reference.

Leaving comments on the writer's talk page is better, but doing it that way makes them harder to find for future reference (which is why I tend to used that method for negative feedback--"praise publicly, criticize privately") and doesn't give as good a feel for how many people are reading the story.