Comments on: Allowing comments on blogs

By: Ray Davis

Ray Davis — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 17:44:22 +0000

“For me, the question of whether a site that calls itself a blog has comments option turned on is actually quite directly related to what constitutes a blog in the first place.” Wouldn’t a less misleading way of saying this be “I prefer blogs which have automated commenting systems”? For me, the impulse to substitute canonical pronouncements for expressions of personal taste is actually quite directly related to what constitutes academic publishing in the worst place. Fruitless attempts to “define” genres on theoretical grounds have wasted time and pages for too many decades. Historical and current empirical evidence shows that the weblog form is clearly friendly towards commenting systems and is just as clearly independent of them.

By: fling93

fling93 — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 02:02:19 +0000

I think there’s little excuse to have a blog without either comments or trackback pings. I can understand turning off comments, as most of the popular blog software has pretty primitive technology compared to what has been available for a while in message boards. But that’s not an excuse for turning off trackback pings (speaking of which, how the hell do you trackback ping a post at this site? I see followup posts, but no trackback URL to ping). But the main value-add of the Internet and blogs compared to other forms of media is that readers can immediately see contrasting views. I don’t really see this as a democracy issue as much as furthering knowledge. Most other forms of mass media have captive audiences (books, TV, academic journals) who have to jump through hoops to find alternate viewpoints to the one they are presented with. The Internet and blogosphere has the potential to transcend personal agendas and help accelerate the pursuit of knowledge and exploration of ideas. But I bet the biggest reason a big blog has neither is exactly the effect Matthew Yglesias pointed out:

The trouble is that when you write something really good, in the sense of being sober, on-point, factual, and tightly argued, your targets would do well to simply ignore you. And so they do.

The Internet and the blogosphere has the potential to raise the level of intellectual discussions such that ideas are valued not by who says them, but by their merit alone. This means the practicing of ignoring inconvenient arguments must be dissuaded as much as possible so that people can’t just glide by on reputation and relative unknowns with something worthwhile to contribute aren’t shut out and ignored. So I think comments and/or trackback pings (especially inline ones instead of ones where you have to click to open a popup window) are essential to the Internet and blogosphere’s main value-add.

By: George Michael

George Michael — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 21:09:43 +0000

Comments are OK as long as they’re full of positive energy.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 19:12:09 +0000

“and the general quality of the comments has defintely declined.” I stopped going into the Calpundit comments for about three months, partly because they got too big and were intimidating; partly because of the “piling on” the house trolls (Al, Charlie) who are now viewed more affectionately as mischievous pets; partly because Kevin’s posts on AWOL didn’t leave room for much diverse comment (hint to bloggers here);partly because I was traveling elsewhere. I have gone back to look at it, I will look for your complaints. I still see names at Kevin I see at Tacitus and ObsWi, so it can’t be all bad. Will Baude will not read any comments, for it appears a single piece of vitriol or nonsense ruins his entire experience. Poor Will.

By: Ikram

Ikram — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 18:52:20 +0000

Laertes wrote A “common carrier” such as a telephone company enjoys that status in part because they exercise no editorial control over the users of their system. The tradition in the blogosphere at present is similar. The telephone company analogy works better with general purveyors of bulletin-board technology, like Quicktopic. I wouldn’t expect Quicktopic (or Blogger) to be responsible for every asinine post that uses their software, just like Bell or BT aren’t responsible for every idiot phone call. But individual bloggers aren’t just making a content-neutral comment technology available. Bloggers post some content-filled post and commentors respond to that post. (I wouldn’t expect a blogger to be responsible for a comment that was not a response to the post—like comment-spam for Cialis or Levitra). I also find that very very few bloggers are entirely uninvolved in their comments section. Almost all bloggers selectively condemn or approve of certain comments on occasion. Even Yglesias, mentioned above, wades in sometimes.

By: Laertes

Laertes — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 17:47:02 +0000

“Also, bloggers are responsible for their comments section. Putting up comments is like being a publisher — if you publish racist comments, even though you disagree with them, you’re responsible.” One might counter with a similarly bare assertion: “Bloggers are not responsible for their comments section. Putting up comments is like operating a telephone company—you’re not legally responsible for the contents of every message that passes through your system.” A “common carrier” such as a telephone company enjoys that status in part because they exercise no editorial control over the users of their system. The tradition in the blogosphere at present is similar. The more selective you are about what you delete, the less you implicitly state about what gets left behind. If, like Charles Johnson, you delete posts that you find to be “offensive,” then you’re marking everything that remains as inoffensive. If instead you delete only death threats, you’re merely marking everything that remains as “not a death threat.”

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 17:03:06 +0000

Bob, I can’t speak for all ‘righties’ but I can say that I have commented on Calpundit/Poltical Animal for somewhere near three years, and the general quality of the comments has defintely declined. I am not saying that because suddenly people stopped agreeing with me—they rarely did even at the beginning. I am saying that because the disagreement has gone from: “you are wrong for the following 5 rational reasons…” to something more along the lines of “!@#%$ You, you stupid !@#$ing bastard.”

By: Ikram

Ikram — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:55:43 +0000

Comments reflect the tone and quality of the site. Cretinous blogs have cretinous comments. Intelligent, civil bloggers get intelligent, civil commentors. In that way, comments serve as a good check on a bloggers ego—if your commentors are obnoxious, you must be as well. (There are a few exceptions. The Reason blog has posters that are much smarter than many of the commentors.) Also, bloggers are responsible for their comments section. Putting up comments is like being a publisher—if you publish racist comments, even though you disagree with them, you’re responsible. You’re the one giving the bigots a forum in your personal web-space. This poses practical difficulties for big bloggers, like Calpundit, who would have devote a crazy amount of time to moderate their enormous comments section. Boo hoo. If you want to run a big time blog, expect to devote a lot of time, or hire people to moderate the comments for you. Alternatively, shut down comments (and watch your site get less popular).

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 16:02:23 +0000

“But on more personal weblogs, there can be a lot of value to mutual backpatting.” I had political sites in mind when I made the comment – one especially. I don’t know what you mean by ‘personal’ but I don’t think I read any.

By: Stentor

Stentor — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 15:50:20 +0000

I rarely read comments, unless it’s a post I find especially interesting, the thread is short (less than 20 posts), and it’s one of the few sites that has decent comment sections. So I can’t understand the idea that comments are a necessary feature of a blog. I also hate the “right-wingers don’t have comments because they can’t handle the criticism!” idea. Given his prodigious reading, I highly doubt that Reynolds doesn’t encounter many posts on other blogs that criticize him every day, and I imagine an Instacomments section would be an even worse cesspool of degraded discourse than Drum or Atrios’s. I leave comments more often than I read them (for example, I stopped reading this thread about a third of the way down). I find them useful for making short comments to the author—things that aren’t worth the trouble of logging into my email. For anything of more substance, I much prefer to put it on my own blog, so that I can have a record of my correspondence.

By: digamma

digamma — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 15:38:36 +0000

Back in 1992 the denizens of talk.politics.guns got bored of their own group which pretty much everyone who was not an NRA fanatic knew to avoid. So they went on what was known in soc.culture.british as the ‘gun nut road show’, led by one Timothy McVeigh (yes, THAT one). The idea of this group was pretty much to shout down every contrary view. Can you point to any archived posts? Google Groups doesn’t seem to have any of that on file.

By: Phill

Phill — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 14:47:34 +0000

I think you guys are getting it dead wrong when you try to define blogs. There is no ‘proper’ blog format, there is no central control, that was the whole point to the Web. The first blog commentary systems appeared in 1993. Ever heard of Web Interactive Talk? Ari Luotenen wrote it to try out the CGI spec he just wrote with Rob. The term weblog did not appear until much, much later. The only real distinguishing feature of Web-Logs is that they have a log structure, the information is organized in a linear fashion according to creation date. Early on in the Web design everyone was creating sites that sprouted out in every direction you could imagine. The point of a Web Log is that you can quickly work out whether the site is current or not.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 14:01:37 +0000

Oh, in this case, the righties by giving Drum’s comment sections a bad reputation, are trying to keep good people from going there to comment; therefore accelerating the decline and eventually destroying Kevin’s blog, which is one of the biggest “moderate” boards. Does this have any familiarity as a tactic? “CNN showed bias last night; all there are are slanted news sources; there are no moderates; there no facts, only opinions”…..if it looks familiar, that is because it is a plan.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 13:55:30 +0000

The righties complaining about Drum’s comment sections are just attempting to translate the “playing the ref” tactics they use in big media to the blogosphere. Drum’s comment sections are just fine. It is intimidating or frustrating to be 1 comment in a hundred; though as bad jim notes,you can get noticed.

By: Liz Lawley

Liz Lawley — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 13:53:20 +0000

I’d have to disagree with ian’s statement that “there is no point to a comments forum where all that happens is mutual back patting.” On a political weblog, that may be true. But on more personal weblogs, there can be a lot of value to mutual backpatting. Context is everything. Also, Wired News has an article today on “Blogger Burnout” that focuses on comments.