How to manage negative comments in your blog July 25, 2005

Posted by JalanSutera.com™ in Blog.
add a comment

Weblog or blog is media. It delivers message through internet. As a media, weblogs received response from readers. They send us comments via tool provided by the engine. Readers may also send us trackback, a mechanism used in a blog that shows a list of items that refer to a post.

D. Keith Robinson has got a post up at SuccessfulBlog.com on how to deal with negative comments. I rewrite his tips with my experience. Here they are:

• Read all comments carefully. Sometimes readers send their comments emotionally after reading our entries. This makes their comments look negative. Reading carefully and understanding comments will eliminate trouble.
• We have to learn from every single comments. Sometimes negative comments root from our mistake. So, learn from it.
• Do not be defensive. Think and read the comments again and again before replying it. Responding to negative feedback may make matters worse.
• If you think that the commenters are just looking for a fight, ignore it. Discussing with such readers are useless.
• If you have a policy on comments, put it clearly on your blog. For example: off-topic comments will be deleted without asking.
• Take positive attitude. Responding comments with kindness and willingness to understand will open your mind.
• We are not perfect. Admit it if we are wrong. We can edit our blog easily, right?
• Do not take every comments personally. Sometimes we think negative comment is a personal attack, but this is often not the case.
• Respond your negative comments via email. Engaging in an e-mail conversation with someone who I’m butting heads with is very helpful in resolving the situation.
• Take it easy. Face every comments with humour.
• Before posting an entry, read and reread.

Blog, weblog, comments, media

FeedShake & WordPress Plugin Competition Winners July 25, 2005

Posted by JalanSutera.com™ in Blog.
add a comment

Feedshake tool helps you to generate new feeds by merging, sorting and filtering existing online RSS feeds. This service doesn’t require any subscription nor e-mail adress.

Meanwhile, Mark has announced WordPress Plugin Competition Winners. Congratulation for all participants and the winners! You all have made WordPress more powerful blog engine!

Feed, RSS,XML, WordPress, plugins, blog

KORAN TEMPO’s photograper infected with bird flu? July 25, 2005

Posted by JalanSutera.com™ in Blog.
4 comments

A stunning headline appears in Pos Kota today: WARTAWAN KORAN TEMPO DIDUGA KENA FLU BURUNG. Arie Basuki, photographer of KORAN TEMPO, 34 years, has been ill since last Friday. He suffered high temperature and felt sick on his chest. According to several friends of the photographer’s peer, Ari recently covered the case of birds flu in Sukabumi and Bogor. But there is no confirmation whether Aire was infected with bird flu or not. Arie is now treated at Sulianti Saroso Hospital, Bogor.

Get well soon, Arie!

Bird Flu, Avian Influenza

Greasemonkey enables to sort rows in WordPress July 24, 2005

Posted by JalanSutera.com™ in Blog.
add a comment

Greasemonkey is getting more popular recently despite the discovery of bugs that could let a malicious website read any local file on a Greasemonkey user’s machine, or view the contents of all local drive directories.

One of Greasemonkey file I like is “WordPress Row Sorter“. If you want to intall this file, right click the link and choose Install User Script. The Grasemonkey file enables WordPress’ user to sort the posts table (or whatever you want to call it the table with the posts and edit, delete buttons) where there were none before. Clicking on them will now sort your rows in ascending and descending order, respectively. This is very cool. Giving it a try is not useless.

greasemonkey, firefox, wordpress

Yahoo! toolbar for firefox, anyone? July 23, 2005

Posted by JalanSutera.com™ in Blog.
1 comment so far

Following Google’s footsteps, Yahoo has released a beta version of it’s toolbar for Firefox. The new toolbar is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Well, Yahoo is left behind by Google. Yahoo will quickly find out that no one uses because of the already implemented search toolbar in Firefox. I only use Yahoo’s account for messenger. Other than that, I use different services. I don’t need Yahoo! Mail, because I use Gmail, and I use Google instead of Yahoo for search because I hate the sponsored results.

Yahoo, Google, toolbar, Firefox, Gmail

Surat Terbuka kepada Presiden RI July 22, 2005

Posted by JalanSutera.com™ in Blog.
comments closed

Bapak Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono yth.

Izinkanlah saya menyampaikan surat terbuka ini untuk meminta perhatian Bapak Presiden yang sungguh-sungguh berkenaan dengan pelanggaran atas ideologi Negara dan konstitusi yang dilakukan secara terang-terangan, yakni penodaan terhadap kebebasan berkeyakinan di negeri kita terhadap kelompok minoritas yang sudah berkali-kali terjadi. Hati saya tergerak untuk menulis surat ini pada saat mendengar pidato Bapak Presiden ketika membuka the ASEM Interfaith Dialogue Kamis pagi, 21 Juli 2005 di Denpasar, Bali. Sungguh enak mendengar ucapan-ucapan Bapak Presiden yang antara lain mengatakan:

“Moderasi berarti kita harus mencegah pemaksaan pendapat seseorang terhadap orang lain dan menghindarkan penggunaan kekerasan. Moderasi mengharuskan kita menghormati hak-hak orang lain, dan menghormati orang lain sebagaimana menghormati diri kita sendiri. Moderasi menuntut kita menghargai dialog dan perbedaan. Dan moderasi menghendaki pendekatan inklusif dan komitmen total terhadap perdamaian dan toleransi.”

Pernyataan Bapak Presiden di atas sangat relevan dengan apa yang sedang terjadi saat ini berkenaan dengan penyerangan dan penutupan Kampus Mubarak, milik Jemaat Ahmadiyah Indonesia di Parung baru-baru ini.

Bapak Presiden,

Sesat-menyesatkan adalah fenomena biasa dalam dunia keagamaan sepanjang sejarah. Akan tetapi merampas kebebasan berkeyakinan adalah sebuah kejahatan kemanusiaan yang sangat menyakitkan. Tidak ada penderitaan batin yang lebih memerihkan dibanding pelarangan terhadap seorang beriman untuk menganut keyakinan batinnya yang ia yakini merupakan jalan keselamatannya di dunia dan di akhirat nanti. Sebenarnyalah kebebasan berkeyakinan adalah berasal dari Sang Pencipta sendiri, dan sama sekali bukan pemberian Negara atau golongan mayoritas.

Adalah sangat disesalkan kalau aparat Negara yang seharusnya melaksanakan amanat konstitusi untuk menjamin hak-hak Warga Negara membiarkan apalagi kalau malah terlibat dalam tindakan melanggar hukum. Sungguh sangat ironis kalau sampai Pemerintah tunduk terhadap intimidasi dan pemaksaan kehendak sekelompok orang yang jelas-jelas melanggar hak asasi manusia yang dijamin oleh konstitusi dan melawan hukum. Percayalah Bapak Presiden, kalau Pemerintah tidak bertindak tegas atau bahkan menyerah terhadap intimidasi dan pemaksaan kehendak yang dilakukan dengan kekerasan, apa yang mereka lakukan sekarang bukan yang terakhir. Tindakan-tindakan serupa akan terus terjadi. Jaminan konstitusi terhadap kebebasan berkeyakinan akan menjadi rumusan yang tidak berarti dan masyarakat beradab akan menertawakan kita.

Tegakah Bapak Presiden jika dalam Negara yang Bapak pimpin seorang atau beberapa orang warga Negara dihukum hanya karena dia atau mereka mengamalkan keyakinan agama atau kepercayaannya yang dianggap menyimpang oleh golongan mayoritas. Apabila suatu agama atau faham keagamaan dilarang di negeri kita apakah yang akan dipakai untuk mengawasi hati orang? Dan kalau mereka didapati beribadah menurut keyakinan dan di tempat mereka sendiri lalu mestikah mereka dianggap telah melakukan tindak kriminal? Kalau mereka masih juga bersiteguh dengan keyakinan mereka apakah mereka harus dipaksa keluar dari negeri ini padahal mereka sejak turun temurun merupakan penduduk asli dan bukan keturunan asing. Karena itu Bapak Presiden, setiap pejabat negara yang berpikiran untuk melarang suatu agama atau faham keagamaan hendaklah memikirkan masak-masak konsekuensi pelarangan tersebut, dan mencoba membayangkan bagaimana kalau pelarangan tersebut dikenakan kepada mereka sendiri. Kalau Tuhan Sang Pencipta saja memberikan mereka kebebasan hidup di atas bumi-Nya apa pula hak negara atau pejabat negara untuk merampas kebebasan seseorang untuk berkeyakinan sesuai dengan pilihannya?

Melalui surat ini saya ingin mengetuk hati nurani Bapak Presiden dan semua pejabat negara di negeri kita sebab wibawa Pemerintah untuk menjamin terlaksananya amanat konstitusi sedang dipertaruhkan.

Denpasar, 21 Juli 2005

Djohan Effendi

Ketua Umum
Indonesian Conference of Religion for Peace (ICRP)

Sekretariat ICRP (Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace)
Jl. Cempaka Putih Barat XXI No. 34 Jakarta Pusat 10520
Telp. 021-42802349 / 42802350
Faks. 021-4227243
Email: icrp@cbn.net.id

Alerts for Google Groups July 22, 2005

Posted by JalanSutera.com™ in Blog.
add a comment

Google Alerts are emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms. Recently Google has added Google Groups to its engine choices. This is great news, as newsgroups change content faster than most Web sites. ID-Gmail, the most hiperactive Indonesian Google Groups, for example, continuously sends/receives hundreds of email per day.

Using the same Alerts management page as with Web and News alerts, Google has simply added Groups to the drop-down selection menu.

Google, Groups, Alerts

RSSes July 21, 2005

Posted by JalanSutera.com™ in Blog.
3 comments

For the most of us in Indonesia, RSS stands for Rumah Sangat Sederhana or Very Simple House. I bet most of Indonesian do not know about RSS or Really Simple Syndication. We are not alone since a survey conducted by PewInternet reveals that 91% of Americans have absolutely no idea what RSS is.

Talking about RSS, I’ve just sign-up to FeedBurner.com. You can access my feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/Jalansutera. This link is nicer than http://jalansutera.com/feed/.

RSS, XML, Feedburner, Feed