What is a Discussion?

A discussion is a place you can post a comment about any topic you desire. Unlike a workspace, once you publish your words in a discussion, only you or an owner of the group in which they were published change them. Discussions can take place with the back-and-forth of dialog, but once a comment is published, there is no real "taking it back." Discussion pages list 25 comments at a time.

A discussion shows the following information:

• When and to which group the discussion was posted
• When the discussion was last edited
• The feedback score of the discussion
• How many comments there are in the discussion and the total number of members commenting
• How many times the discussion has been viewed and by how many members

What do all the links on the Discussion bar lead to?

Can you edit Discussions?

There are two different ways to edit a discussion, depending on whether you are the original author of the topic, or are adding a comment on someone else's discussion.

If you were the original author who started the discussion (see "my items"), you can go back and edit your post by clicking on the "edit" link in the brown bar above your discussion.

If you were responding to someone else's discussion, locate your comment in the discussion and click on the hyperlinked datestamp next to your name. This will lead you to a new page showing just your comment and you can click on the "edit" or "delete" link appearing in the brown bar above it.

What's this feedback stuff I see?

At the end of each discussion, where you add a comment, you also have the opportunity to leave feedback to the topic and/or leave feedback to the topic's originator.

Leave feedback to this topic? Here you can use one of your points in your feedback bank to give the topic a higher or lower score (by assigning positive feedback or negative feedback, respectively).

If you feel the topic is one of importance to the rest of the group, you can assign it positive feedback, and the discussion will appear higher in the "highest rated discussions" list for your group.

Conversely, if you feel the discussion is off-topic or inappropriate for your group, you can assign negative feedback and that will push the topic down on the list.

Leave feedback to this topic's originator, NAME? Here you can use one of your points in your feedback bank to give the person who started the topic a higher or lower feedback score (by assigning positive or negative feedback, respectively).

By giving feedback this way, you directly affect the value of the number next to the person's name (their personal feedback score). Positive feedback will push the number up. Negative feedback will push the number down.

What are Tags?

Tagging is a way to apply words, or “tags”, to items like workspaces to make it easier to return to them later. You tag an item by typing a word in the "My Tags" box at the bottom of the page. All the tags you apply to all items on ned.com will appear in a list under the "tags" tab on your profile and at “my ned.com”/”my tags”. Clicking on a tag will show a list of all the items that you tagged with that word and let you link directly to them.

You can also find interesting content by clicking on the tags that others have used. Click on a tag, i.e. "Sudan", and you will see a list of items that have been tagged with that word. You can see what other members' tags in the following places:

• On the home page, there is a tag cloud that lets you see what people have tagged site-wide.
• In a group's home page, you can see tags that have been applied to items in the group.
• For each item that can be tagged (comment, workspace, discussion), you can see tags that have been used on the item.