Blog comments - On of off?

[justice]

A good overview of advantages and disadvantages of not having comments on your blog, an approach more and more writers take.

For most people, a comment form is an essential part of what a blog is, and most of us enjoy the opportunity to leave feedback (even if we do so only rarely). But there are also plenty of possible reasons why comments are unnecessary, or undesirable.

<br>http://mattgemmell.com/2012/01/07/comments-commentary/

from http://s.vandragt.com/post/22314328616/blog-comments-on-or-off

[TaoPhoenix]

Tough call.

I think it definitely depends on audience. Youtube comments are all over the map. "Explain xkcd"'s comments are really good.

Having successful comments feels like modern web. Maybe getting ticked off enough to feel you have to turn comments off might be "post-modern web", whatever that is.

[Gwen7]

some people are more comfortable in the give & take of a discussion. others are only happy with a soapbox and the floor completely to themselves. much of Matt Gemell's concern seems to be about his always getting the last word in. which is fine. but his argument is self-serving and contradictory in places.

if you don't want to allow comments, don't enable them. but spare me the sneering and lame justifications. especially when you're quick to create strawmen, and take strong issue with somebody using the term 'bully pulpit.'

if the shoe fits...

methinks Matt Gemell doth protest a bit too much.

[daddydave]

tl;dr because I have to go to work but it seems to me that many of  the best blogs seem to be a magnet for good commenters, and often the comments contribute as much or more than the article itself. I like to think a good blog cultivates good comments. I agree it depends on the content.

[jaden]

I agree - some popular blogs have better content in their comments than they have in the original blog post.  Lifehacker was a great example of this.  They had some of the best commenters around (now not so much).

[Deozaan]

I agree - some popular blogs have better content in their comments than they have in the original blog post.  Lifehacker was a great example of this.  They had some of the best commenters around (now not so much).

Interesting. I recently saw an article on LifeHacker where the author said "F-You" to the commenters, making multiple ad-hominems to the readership at large, all while extolling the virtues of a comment-less system.

It may not have been LifeHacker, but it was definitely one of the Gawker sites.

EDIT: Found it. It was on Gizmodo: You Write 'Bias Journalism' and I Read 'Derp'

EDIT2: This is actually the article, written by the same person, extolling the virtues of no comments: Comments Are Bad Business for Online Media

[rgdot]

I am not sure I can see many or any circumstances where comments are not a good idea. In a webmaster sense I would value comments higher than some analytics script telling me xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx spent 10-30s on your site. It is a proof of visitor engagement.

[daddydave]

I agree - some popular blogs have better content in their comments than they have in the original blog post.  Lifehacker was a great example of this.  They had some of the best commenters around (now not so much).

I agree, Lifehacker is actually one of the main ones I had in mind when I wrote what I wrote.

EDIT: Found it. It was on Gizmodo: You Write 'Bias Journalism' and I Read 'Derp'

That was unbelievably painful to read.

I do agree that ""Bias" Is a Spectrum and We're All On It," though. I also agree that if you are the one who owns the web site, you have every right to moderate those people who seem to have been printed on a 3-D printer with human rear end as the material. Just try not to become one of them.

[barney]

I'm kinda ambivalent on this one. 

On the one (1) hand, blog comments can engender some pretty lively conversations, trolls aside  .  On the other hand, would blog comments detract from the forum topics  ?

Right now, I can search the forum topics, albeit in mine own clumsy fashion, and be reasonably certain I've covered whatever 'twas I sought.  If comments are enabled, now I have to search the blog articles, as well, and try to merge those results with the forum results.  Keeping the timeline accurate could be somewhat difficult - read nightmare - to accomplish  .

I guess I'd say, "No," to blog comments unless some methodology exists to merge them into forum conversations.

(Granted, I'm thinking of a DC blog, not blogs in general, but from what I've seen - in my own blog, as well as others - some degree of fragmentation and focus attenuation tends to occur, with comment references to other blog posts that are not directly quoted.  This dilution seems to happen to a lesser degree in forae.  (Well-l-l, depending upon how much I've had to drink  .))

[TaoPhoenix]

I'm kinda ambivalent on this one. 

On the one (1) hand, blog comments can engender some pretty lively conversations, trolls aside  .  On the other hand, would blog comments detract from the forum topics  ?

Right now, I can search the forum topics, albeit in mine own clumsy fashion, and be reasonably certain I've covered whatever 'twas I sought.  If comments are enabled, now I have to search the blog articles, as well, and try to merge those results with the forum results.  Keeping the timeline accurate could be somewhat difficult - read nightmare - to accomplish  .

I guess I'd say, "No," to blog comments unless some methodology exists to merge them into forum conversations.

(Granted, I'm thinking of a DC blog, not blogs in general, but from what I've seen - in my own blog, as well as others - some degree of fragmentation and focus attenuation tends to occur, with comment references to other blog posts that are not directly quoted.  This dilution seems to happen to a lesser degree in forae.  (Well-l-l, depending upon how much I've had to drink  .))

I'll suggest that the whole topic says "comments" and not "blog comments where the site also has a forum".

Either way, the comments on an article are ... hopefully ... related to that article. Forum topics tend to be more loosely created.

[barney]

Forum topics tend to be more loosely created.

??????????????????
I'd guess we haven't been reading the same blogs  .  Or forae for that matter  .

BTW, comments are comments, whether or no forae are involved.  But, in my experience, forum posts tend to stick more to the point than blog comments.  And attenuation is common to a great number of blog posts' comments.  That, after all, is one (1) of the reasons the blog comment/no comment question arises.

[TaoPhoenix]

Forum topics tend to be more loosely created.

??????????????????
I'd guess we haven't been reading the same blogs  .  Or forae for that matter  .

BTW, comments are comments, whether or no forae are involved.  But, in my experience, forum posts tend to stick more to the point than blog comments.  And attenuation is common to a great number of blog posts' comments.  That, after all, is one (1) of the reasons the blog comment/no comment question arises.

Sure - maybe excepting this topic, forum topics are "show me some music videos, NSFW humor, $%^%$^%$^%$ Copyright crap, and (for us) software app questions. In contrast, blogs are "articles" and the comments are supposed to mostly pertain to that article and stay in the same time zone as the topic. A funny example is Slashdot, where in one sense the articles are so bad that the comments are better! But even on a humble little blog, like Explainxkcd, the comments are really good, but they're *to the article*.

[TaoPhoenix]

Actually, returning back to that "Potential Commission" web layout app, (which I am now looking elsewhere to do), an awesome experiment would be to have the same text on different web layouts, and watch the types of comments, from flowers to cars to landscapes to ye olde historie, etc.

[rxantos]

I guess the division would be:
A. Discussion.
B. Advertisement.

On one you want to discuss an idea. On the other you want to promote an idea.

On one you care about what you audience think. On the other you only care that they hear you. I say hear, because you have no way to know if they are listening to you since they have no way to comment.

I usually don't bother with advertisement ones, unless is for things like news.

[Tuxman]

On my "blog" (although I would never refer to it as a blog) I generally allow comments, only turned them off for one article where too much flame was posted.

While I really don't care if the things I write are of any interest for anyone (I mainly write because I like to), sometimes I get useful feedback, like failings in my research. (I had to correct some articles in the past because I leave my comments section open.)

However, maybe I am not the typical audience. About 150 daily readers (avg. value) are not really top of the world.

[TaoPhoenix]

From a whole different perspective, I might be getting close to my "TurboBlog Engine" that I have mentioned a few times on here. Conceptually I could make small updates on hundreds of nodes on a tree DB, then spin out the whole thing to a web site.

So that would make it difficult to have comments because every time I did a refresh they would all disappear.