Comments on: Student blogs

By: pdf23ds

pdf23ds — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 15:16:26 +0000

Sharon, it’s true that a recent comments feed helps, and there are some other things that are nice too, like comment feeds on individual posts. But there’s a fundamental scaling problem in very long threads. Over time they get more and more unwieldly, especially if the comments are not threaded. (Threaded comments threads have pros and cons, but I think they do scale better.) Besides that, recent comments lists are usually very short and don’t get the kind of attention that the post lists on the main page get. In message boards, the threads are ordered in the main page by the date of the most recent post added to it. Another thing is that many places have a mild stigma associated with “reviving” dead, or “zombie”, threads, especially the longer ones (which often are the most interesting ones and the most deserving of new comments).

By: Eszter

Eszter — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 13:24:18 +0000

Thanks, Sharon, for the suggestion. I needed something that is super simple (it looks like SK2 has several settings) given that this needed to be installed by 25 students who aren’t used to WordPress. Auto-close comments just needs to be activated once it’s installed, there are no settings with which to tinker.

More importantly, it looks like SK2 still let’s spammers leave comments although you may then be able to moderate them. That doesn’t quite help me. My provider will lock my account from too much CPU usage and it turns out that lots of spam being left on a blog (not to mention 25) is enough to pass the threshold of what they consider acceptable use of the account. I couldn’t risk that. I already spent enough time last summer dealing with such a situation.

By: sharon

sharon — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 08:53:34 +0000

If you use decent anti-spam plugins, you don't need to auto-close comments. Why aren't you using Spam Karma? It rocks. The blog format has a very simple way to handle 'non-temporally-local' discussions: a Recent Comments list in your sidebar. (Even Blogger has a plugin to do this.)

By: coturnix

coturnix — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 03:48:28 +0000

This is so cool. This is the third blogging class I’ve learned of recently. It is amazing to watch students’ blogs take off after a while.

By: pdf23ds

pdf23ds — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 23:50:00 +0000

I don’t like the auto-close idea, either, but let’s face the truth. Old threads are dead threads. Blogging as a format simply isn’t built to handle non-temporally-local discussions, like Wiki or even mailing lists can.

By: Ampersand

Ampersand — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 23:08:00 +0000

I don’t like the auto-close idea; it’s fun when, occasionally, non-spam discussions reopen on a post that’s been lying quiet a year or two.

By: Eszter

Eszter — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 21:24:06 +0000

In case anyone's wondering, agm's comment refers to this post by Smooth Criminal.

By: agm

agm — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 20:54:39 +0000

“And please, just say no to poking.”

Priceless commentary for a new generation.