www.roanoke.com

Over the past few months, we have been exploring different commenting platforms, and we have selected Disqus, a commenting system used by many media outlets. We selected this system because it offers a lot of the features we heard from you are important. We are currently testing it out on “Damage Done“, a three-part series on the impact of heroin addiction on two local families.

Optional social sign in.

With Disqus, you can sign in through your Facebook or Twitter accounts, or Google and Yahoo, or you can set up an account with Disqus. If you choose a Disqus sign on, an email is required, but you can select your screen name and protect your identity if you prefer.

Social sharing.

You can also share your comment on Facebook or Twitter to get your friends and followers engaged in the topic. Find this option under account settings—edit profile—services.

Thumbs up.

You can vote for others’ comments – similar to Facebook “likes”. You do not need to be logged on to like a comment.

Moderation.

We will continue to moderate all comments. You can also report a comment. To flag a comment, click the flag symbol at the bottom of the comment.

Threaded comments.

Disqus allows users to reply to others’ comments or post separately. The threads are nested so it’s easy to follow the conversation.

Keep up with the conversation.

You can see what others are saying by subscribing to the thread of comments on a story, and receive email notifications when someone has replied to your comment. To do this, when you are in Disqus, go to account settings—edit profile—notifications.

Check out this new commenting tool. Once you sign up through Disqus, you can adjust your personal settings within your account to subscribe to threads, post to social sites and much more. Check it out and tell us what you think. If you’ve used Disqus on other sites, let us know what you like and dislike about it.

As of last week, we had 55 respondents to our poll on features content. Thanks for the responses!

Here are some of the highlights of the results:

1. The three most important topics to readers are: Features bloggers, features stories, and upcoming shows & concerts. This pretty much aligned with what we on the features team want to highlight in the redesign. It’s helpful to know that upcoming shows and concerts ranked so high — that’s something we’ll keep in mind as we move forward.

2. Coming in after these top 3 were restaurant reviews/news and comics/puzzles. You can currently find reviews here, and leave your own.

3. National celebrity news ranked last, and that’s understandable. You want local feature stories, and that’s what we aim to provide.

Some readers also left comments, and here are some we can help with:

- Some asked for local arts reporting: Please visit Mike Allen’s “Arts & Extras” blog, where he extends his arts coverage beyond what he writes for the paper. He also writes a weekly column for the Sunday Extra section that’s full of local arts news.

- For upcoming local music shows, visit music reporter Tad Dickens’ blog “Cut ‘n Scratch.” He’s constantly posting show news and updates throughout the week.

- Some mentioned they like the weekly Retail Roundup column and business news: You can currently get your business fix at the Ticker blog and retail fix at Amanda Codispoti’s blog, “Storefront.”

- It was also good to see several of you mention you like local news, traffic news, and hard news. That’s what we highlight on roanoke.com every day.

- Finally, for the person who said “I love it when the spotlight is on local musicians, crafters, or places, . . . . . things that make our region so unique and special!” — that is definitely our newsroom’s goal: to bring to light the stories that make our place in the world special.

So that leads me to the question: Share one story idea that you have for the features team. And if you’d like to vote in our features poll, please do so!

Today’s is open mic here on RefreshRT. We want to hear any ideas you have about the redesign of roanoke.com. Our teams are working on various parts of the site, and your feedback has been really valuable. Keep it coming because we are listening.

What other things should we consider as we remake roanoke.com?

Give your ideas about design, navigation, multimedia and everything in between.

And if you have other news sites to point us to, please share those as well.

Have you seen our new gardening blog, Down to earth? The idea for this blog actually “grew” here on the RefreshRT blog, when commenters said they would enjoy having such a blog.

You may be familiar with blogger Karen Hager from her gardening column that runs in the Extra section every other Saturday. She’s been pleased with the response so far; it seems there are lots of eager gardeners out there with lots of questions and useful information to share with one another.

If you’ve got ideas for Karen,visit her blog! You can also find ”Down to earth” on our mobile site, m.roanoke.com. From the topics page, click on blogs and you’ll see it in the list.

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The results of our photo/video poll were enlightening. Out of the 30 respondents (we hope more people will vote in the future), readers seem to overwhelmingly prefer breaking news videos and photo galleries. This was interesting.

Follow-up question: For those who like breaking news videos, we’d like more clarification.

What if it’s a press conference? (The recent firing of former Virginia Tech basketball coach Seth Greenberg comes to mind).

Or do you mean you’d like us to get videos on breaking news scenes like major traffic accidents?

Would you view user-submitted videos on our site?

Thanks for the great feedback on national and international news headlines. It was heartening to see that our readers value local content, but also wouldn’t mind having national and world news so that roanoke.com would be a ”complete one-stop shop,” according to reader Sandi Saunders. That certainly is a goal of ours — to keep readers engaged on our site.

Other readers noted that the new site should not be cluttered with too much information, and to separate local content from others. Reader Phillip Murillas suggested an Associated Press ticker or widget feed.

Please keep sharing examples of sites that organize and display non-local headlines well so we can look at them for ideas.

This week we also shared the news that we’ve launched new weather tools on Kevin Myatt’s Weather Journal blog. Those who have tried out the radar and Futurecast maps like the fact that you can zoom right into your part of town — even down to your street — and that you don’t have to go to multiple sites for a complete weather picture.

If you’re out and about, you can also access the radar map on our mobile site, m.roanoke.com, on your smartphone or tablet. There’s a direct link to it on the main landing page. On Kevin Myatt’s blog on our mobile site, you can access the map if you go to the roanoke.com full site.

Thanks for the feedback on QR codes. What we’ve heard from those who weighed in this week are that you don’t use them or that they aren’t useful unless they are well executed – providing valuable information or exclusive content or offers.

As Scott pointed out, there is much debate about the usefulness of QR codes in the technology world.

Kyle from the RefreshRT team also noted that if it’s not exclusive content the QR code is leading to, it could be just as quick to use a search engine.

Continue to share your thoughts on QR codes. If you come across examples – good or bad in your opinion – pass them along. We are always looking for ways to connect our print readers with our online content, especially as we offer more mobile products.

And we have more good news to share!

• You can now access RefreshRT on your mobile phone or tablet. Go to m.roanoke.com and on the “topics” page, click blogs and scroll down to see this blog. We may even create a QR code that will provide a direct link to RefreshRT on mobile devices.

• roanoke.com has earned the platinum award in The Roanoker’sannual Best Of program for “Local Website You Check the Most”. And @roanoketimes tied for silver for “Best Local Twitter Feed”.

Thanks to those who voted for us! We hope to continue earning these awards (and more) with the new roanoke.com.

This post is from Luanne Rife,  a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.

The Roanoke Times editorial board in December launched Point/Counterpoint to encourage informative debate on topics. Two experts are invited to begin the debate in the Sunday Horizon opinion section. The discussion then moves over to the RoundTable blog where we had hoped people would continue the debate and participate in live chats with the experts.

We like the idea behind Point/Counterpoint, but think we could have executed it better. For starters, the blog post became lost among all our other posts, and we don’t think we allowed enough time for people to dig into an issue before jumping to the next one.

This past Sunday, we initiated some changes. A Point/Counterpoint topic will appear over two weeks in Horizon. The first week will feature the experts’ initial essay. The second week will feature their rebuttals and comments gleaned from the RoundTable.

In the interim, we’ll feature it prominently on the RoundTable to make it easier for people to jump into the conversation. (For a fuller explanation, read my column here.) In fact, a lively discussion has already erupted with more than five dozen comments about home-schoolers and sports.

We’d like to hear your suggestions on how we can make this more user-friendly and of value to you.

1. Have you looked for Point/Counterpoint online? Were you able to find it easily? Did you join a discussion? What would make your experience more worthwhile?

2. Have you seen online debates at other websites that you thought were done well?

3. What topics get your blood pounding? Your eyes glazing?

4. What other suggestions would you have for us in presenting this feature or in drawing in participants?

Thanks for the birthday wishes from our stalwart readers — Sandi Saunders, Other John and Trevor.

Sandi, we are glad to hear you consider roanoke.com your site, and Other John, thank you for your support of our blogs and local news.

Trevor, thanks for checking out the Toronto site and sharing your thoughts about it (we will aim for less clutter).

It was entertaining to read about the Internet providers of 1997: AOL, iPlus and dial-up (just the words sound ancient!).

We’re looking forward to celebrating our Sweet 16 next year, and it’s exciting to think of the changes coming to the site. Please stay tuned!

In other news, we’d like to brag a bit.

Last week, roanoke.com received “special recognition” in The Society of News Design’s Best of Digital News Design competition.

“Telling great stories and designing successful experiences is never easy. Whether the team or the organization is small, limited resources can limit but they can also inspire great creativity. Several small teams and organizations stood out in this year’s competition. The Roanoke Times is emblematic of the challenges of a smaller community and team. Roanoke’s coverage may not be able to be as broad as national or international news organizations but it is deep within their community. The multimedia storytelling explores highly personal issues and forces viewers to confront issues that rarely surface in their daily lives.”

Thank you, SND!

And if you’re curious, the winner of the World’s Best Designed site is the revamped bostonglobe.com.

If you answered our poll last week, we asked a question on whether you read stories that are trending — whether they are most-read, most-commented or most-shared.

This question is important to us because it helps us gauge audience interest in a story. In our morning news budget meetings, we look at stories that are most-read on our site, and the most-searched terms as well. Sometimes, the most-searched terms have led us to stories we wouldn’t have otherwise found — such as this week’s obituary of local stylist Mitchell Brumfield. It’s another source of information for us.

Automotive News' trending tool

But there are many ways to present trending stories, and find the latest stories as well.

Read more »