Earlier I argued that the everyday applications that we consider to be the online world are too easy to use.  It was a complicated argument that was lacking for examples as well as a clearer explanation.  The bottom line is that the concepts of interaction are so commonplace they’ve become banal and invisible.  Until they are updated, the interactive breakthroughs that make the web so exciting will live on the cutting room floor of the next failed start-up.  What is a commonplace web-interaction that is ignored and boring and useless?

Comments.

It is hard to imagine this in 2010, but comments are a very strange phenomenon.  What is a comment section doing in an article?  What is the purpose of it?  An article is the broadcast of a thesis – in most cases it has been considered and marinated with time and editing and rewriting.  A comment is a statement made in the moment.  Until the online world made it ubiquitous, the phrase comment had verbal/audio connotations.  In other words, one made comments only in conversations.  Conversations are instantaneous and spontaneous exchanges – quite the opposite of articles.  Currently, a word about comments is considered more textual.  To put it all together: the fact that an article and a web-based comment are both text-based, is the only commonality.  They are different beasts all together.  An article is a donkey – it works and is productive and it can reproduce.  A comment is a mule – it works as well, but it cannot reproduce.

Currently the relationship between articles and comments is taken for granted.  They are almost always included on a blog or article, an in almost always the same way.  An article is broadcast into the universe and the readership takes in the thesis.  Then slowly over time, the readership responds with comments – they can be thoughtful, challenging, spam, confrontational, tangential, long and short.  Either way, they are posted in chronological order at the bottom of the page in a way that de-emphasizes their content (opposite of the article).  Some commenters respond to other comments, rather than the article itself.  Rather than broadcasting the fruits of that tangent, the content is buried deep at the bottom of the page relevant only to those willing to dig for it.

How to make comments more relevant

Make them harder to post.  Hire a well-paid moderator to sift through incoming comments and select only those that contribute to the thesis in a pre-determined way.  Hide all comments to readers – only making them available to those who have posted acceptable comments.  After a time, broadcast all accepted comments in a way that organizes the content.

This proposal for a comment meritocracy requires something that is considered counter-productive in the speed-first internet.  The articles that use this strategy need time to marinate with readers.  They need time for things to happen behind-the-scenes.  Andrew Sullivan uses comments in such a way on his blog.  Rather than open all comments to users, he accepts user emails and filters through all the noise that accrues, publishing only those user-comments that contribute (positively or negatively) to the conversation.  His conversations take on their own life on this publication, giving the readership time to ingest the points he is making, and contribute thoughts of their own.  What transpires is a truly interactive experience where the ideas are emphasized by turning down the noise volume of the comments.

More on this soon…

You are learning Spanish and you want to use the web to teach you.  The New York Times broke it down for you on January 27, 2010.  The Web Way to Learn a Language by Eric Taub tells you there are free and expensive options.  There are social networks and black-box software available.  Do you want to hear paid actors speak textbook Spanish or do you want to interact with fellow students stutter in their strained accents.  It’s all there.

Actually not all of it is there.  Something is missing from the article.  And it’s important.

You want to learn Spanish.  How do you do it?  It’s a very easy series of difficult steps.

1. Fill your empty brain with Spanish vocabulary.

2. Speak Spanish badly.

3. Repeat #2 every day in every way for as long as it takes until you are watching Predator re-runs on Telemundo on a Wednesday night while every other idiot is tolerating CSI Miami.

Rosetta Stone and LiveMocha exist to complete step #1.  Your brain is empty and they know how to fill it with Spanish.  They offer variations of the same theme: turn a Flash application into an interactive vocabulary quiz.  The dings and buzzers tell you when you’re right and wrong.  The progress bar tells you how far you’ve come.  Eventually, your line will tell you and everyone else that you know how to ask for the bathroom in Barcelona.

The web is bigger than #1.  Rosetta Stone and LiveMocha are small enough to handle that because that’s the easy part.  Let’s try something else.  Let’s try to make #3 meaningful and engaging and interactive.  The web is waiting for an application that makes that possible.  This is what needs to happen.

There is a feeling every new language student shares.  Every student is overcome with this feeling the moment they are about to speak Spanish to a stranger.  It is a mixture of dread and shame and embarassment and frustration.  Overcoming this fear is essential to making #3 happen.  Recreating this feeling in a language website is possible and absolutley essential to building a truly innovative interactive experience.  The fear will not be overcome unless it is confronted.

A meaningful online lnaguage tool would make this promise to users: this will make you talk and it will force you to listen.  And you will most likely feel really uncomfortable while you’re doing it.  This is not the online language tool version eating your Spanish vegetables.  This is the online language tool version of your first Spanish date.  A horrible experience that left you with a lifetime worth of lessons.

All of the language websites profiled on the NYT article were fine in their own way.  They should be used along with library books, classrooms, and private tutors to support all the students in the middle of the #1 phase of their lessons.  This new tool described here would compliment any and all lesson plans with engaging practice tools.  In other words: the world wide web needs a language lab.