Read Write Web recently covered a new online commenting tool built by Jim Jeffers called Encouraged Commentary.  As RWW writes, “The new commenting features … [allows] users to highlight the sections of text that prompted them to comment and immediately respond. Using that context, Encouraged Commentary begins to string conversations and content together.”  There are a few other great features that will make those of us predisposed to commenting more likely to do so. The potential for Jim’s idea is big because he is letting other developers freely tinker with the code. Serious kudos on that.

Encouraged commentary could work especially well with Jason Santa Maria’s idea for comment milemarkers, as Jim himself points out.  I have talked about milemarkers on this blog as well.  I hope that companies like Disqus and IntenseDebate begin to add features like these.

While commenting is only done by a small minority of web users, it needs to be improved. And RWW’s Rick Turoczy obviously agrees.  He begins the coverage of Encouraged Commentary with the following: “Commenting on blogs is - by and large - broken. Designed with the hope of proffering interaction among bloggers and readers, commenting has generally devolved into a series of one-off responses with little actual conversation.  Why? It’s not designed to facilitate conversations.”

Despite the room for improvement, there is obviously a need for a different mechanism for blog engagement.  Good content amasses wide audiences which creates potential for great conversations.  To really capitalize on these opportunities, both financial and social, we need to pull more people into rewarding dialogue with tools that focus conversation and eliminate excess noise.  The Qwidget is our best shot at doing just that.