Virtual Communities guru Howard Rheingold offers some quick advice. Howard honed his thoughts in BBS-type environments like the famous WELL Online, but most of those thoughts still apply here in the blogosphere. John Coates' 1998 classic Cyberspace Innkeeping is another document worth your while - still excellent after all these years.
If your blog has an active comments section, these essays will help you kick it up a notch.
Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:
*This* puts text in bold.
_This_ puts text in italics.
bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.
To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.
I have hosted communities since 1986 and my current one (cellar.org promote promote) has existed since 1990. Mr. Rheingold's "proverbs" are exactly on target... as usual.
I would add a few. In order for the user's community to be truly successful and truly a community, the user has to feel that s/he is personally invested in it. The user should, ideally, believe that posting increases the value of the community and that this is a Good Thing.
Now the beef: comments sections don't encourage complete communications in the way that forums do. They allow for one level of feedback but don't really promote conversations. Conversations HAPPEN, yes; but they are spotty, hard to follow, and do not encourage a complete understanding because for the most part they are hit and run.
(For instance, I have a lot of stuff to get done, and I doubt I'll revisit this comments section...)
On the Cellar, like many forums, we have a set of "regulars" whose personalities and interests are known to the community. This gives us a basis for understanding that's deeper than what you see in comments sections. As one user said, "I could hate G for his political views, but he's a nice guy and he built his own house and I think that's really cool." G is represented as a complete person and so his politics is seen in light of who he is overall.