Guidelines for editing and commenting on Confluence pages
Asked by David Stokes:

Hi

We are using Confluence for capturing various information such as product requirements, internal product documentation and capturing decisions that are made. However, what we have found challenging is how people in the company interact with the Confluence page to update and comment on the contents. I have seen the new inline comments which is a good improvement, but there are times when it becomes really messy where some people are updating the page, some people provide general comments and comments on specific parts of the document. When everyone does it differently and there has been a good amount of interaction with the page, it can be really difficult, particularly sometime in the future, to try and piece together the discussion threads, comments and updates to the page to determine where it all got to.

One of the problems is that comments are not linked to a specific version of the page. A piece of text that was commented on may be later on be changed or even deleted altogether making it confusing when trying to understand what piece of text was commented on that is no longer there.

I'm sure we aren't the only company that struggles with it and I'm wondering what other companies do to make it work more effectively. We value the discussions that go on in the company and capturing provides a valuable asset. What we wouldn't like to put in place restrictions otherwise people may use other method's such as email, which is an even worse situation ![sad](/html/@C495B4504065515364EB1894F812B34C/images/emoticons/sad.png "sad")

Thanks  
David


Answers:
author: Alejandro Conde Carrillo
body: Hi David,

Inline comments are specific to that test. They will be gone if the text they are associate to is removed or changed. For this reason they should be used to discuss a particular part of the text and they will resolved once that text is changed. You can also manually resolve an inline comment.

Comments should be more general and they will be present in all versions of the page. You can quote a part of the text using the quote format. For Example:
> One of the problems is that comments are not linked to a specific version of the page. A piece of text that was commented on may be later on be changed or even deleted altogether making it confusing when trying to understand what piece of text was commented on that is no longer there.

As a rule of thumb:

* Inline comments are used when a particular part of the text needs to be reviewed.
* Comments are used to express opinions on the content of the page.

You can also find more information in [Commenting on pages and blog posts](https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Commenting+on+pages+and+blog+posts).

Hope this helps you :smile:


author: David Stokes
body: Thanks for the quick response!

I did some testing on the inline comments to make sure I understand how it worked. But from what I can see, they are not version specific, ie: if there is a inline comment, if I go and update the page by editing it, when I save it, those inline comments are still there.

Have I understood this correctly?

Thanks

comments: author: Alejandro Conde Carrillo
body: Hello David.You are right, I might not have expressed myself correctly the first time. I have edited my previous question to make sure there is a complete answer for reference. Let me know if you still have any doubts.