What do y’all comment on and why?

Posts that end with a question probably get more comments.

This isn’t an answer to the question, but a reflection on the effect – the prospect of lots of comments no doubt entices some people to post, but it gives me pause. Although I guess I like it when a post gets lots of comments, the bar for a post that I anticipate getting few comments is much lower than for one that will get many. Unfortunately, two of my central areas interest constantly provoke distracting comments, and I have self-consciously refrained from posting some things in order to avoid feeling that I have, yet again, to choose between rehashing things that I’ve lost interest in or seeming to be rude by ignoring someone.

I suppose that I’m agreeing w/ El Cid and PolFoot above, but posts that are more strictly “informative” in the “here’s some interesting information” sense don’t get many comments because “yes, that was interesting. Thanks.” is a boring comment. Some of the authors here have more posts like that than others. But, when there’s a problem of some sort in the post (not a mistake, but something to be worked on), then commenting seems like it’s useful and constructive and not just showing off or back-slapping. (I can’t say I never do those latter, two, though.)

Social status of being effective in carrying out #’s 3 and/or 6. Isn’t it everyone’s desire to achieve a Kos or HotAir-ian topic that hits the +1000 comments?

To expand on point (5): This is a blog written primarily by academics, which is read and commented on primarily by non-academics. Those non-academics who read an academic blog are going to be particularly attracted to subjects on which they can hold some kind of opinion or make what seem to be useful points without being a full-fledged member of academia. Thus, not only philosophy and political theory, but also economics, sociology, and public policy posts written from an academic perspective, but in a way which implicitly or explicitly invites participation from those on the “outside”, will tend to attract a lot of comments…

An interesting question to ask (I’d like to see a poll done) would be how many people read the post through before commenting, just skim it or just skim the comments without reading the post at all.

You expect honest answers to that one?

Once a certain quantity of comments is reached, hardly anyone new to the conversation will read all the comments before commenting. If the purpose of commenting is to have one’s comment read, then it doesn’t make sense to contribute to already-long discussions.

I tend to avoid commenting on heavily-commented posts, because those usually feature well-worn positions without much chance of substantive contributions making much difference, and are usually dominated by a fairly small clique of frequent commenters (this isn’t directed at CT specifically, but it does happen here; I’m a member of the ingroup at some blogs myself, so I see it happening from both sides) who are focused on their ingroup interactions and don’t pay that much attention to comments from outsiders (unless they are flamingly provocative).

I will admit to a weakness for snarking at trolls. I know one is not supposed to feed them; I know that I will never convince them of the wrongness of their positions; I know all this and all other internet traditions and yet it’s very hard to resist when the opportunity for a “shorter” presents itself.

Perhaps a 12 step program could be recommended for this particular affliction of mine?

I comment because I’m too old to write on the walls in restrooms.

What El Cid said: posts that are contentious get comments (which includes much of the worst), I guess you can subsume the “Emerson effect” (LOL, by the way) under that.

But to answer the question: I comment because I think there will be a discussion – & that I stand to gain from it (if only by knowing how quickly the choice of words degenerates, how important it is how you write i.s.o what you write and how much of a ‘clique’ has already been formed with people only reacting to the usual suspects (or anybody else with a claim to ‘local’ notoriety))

Between the () is some ;-)

I remember the day John Derbyshire coined the word “bleg” and now it’s taken off. I’m honored to witness the creation of a new blog inspired phrase: Emerson Effect. Thank you.

I think that The Emerson Effect, as a technical term, should be capitalized, and should be described in less neutral terms, using phraseology like “blessed by a visit by the master commenter John Emerson”.

Controversy and snark make threads go, regardless of their source. If a thread says everything that needs to be said, it might get no comments at all.

CT may be interested in knowing that my attempts to troll Yglesias fall flat. The kids there seem to be Ivy PoliSci Democratic Party wannabe operatives with no sense of humor, plus trolls more horrible than me.

The Valve, mixed results. Edge of the American West, no fun. Lawyers Guns and Money, mediocre results. Only Unfogged loves me, and they’re not really sure any more either.

On genteel academic sites I’m never sure whether I’m welcomed because I keep things hopping, despised because I fuck with the public order, or a little of both. It’s fortunate for me that I don’t terribly care. In general I think that academics are handicapped in the blogosphere by their need to remain respectable and by their awareness of their disciplinary protocols and chains of command.

Just as I am the master of Type B Commenters (often called trolls by the insensitive and bigoted), the founder of Lizardbreath’s present blog (Ogged, pbuh) was the master of blog proprietors. He wrote wonderfully openended posts, and whenever necessary (which was often) trolled his own blog.

From my point of view, blog posts are there to entertain, not passively, but by giving people a chance to argue, chat, joke, or otherwise write something about the topic.

Wow, I have exactly the opposite opinion. Comments are value-added, not the primary content. I value the posts which are information-rich and authoritative—that’s why I’m reading this blog and not dozens of others. The more academic and specialized, the better, because that’s how I learn from them. It’s the increase of the typical political blog fodder of hot-button topics that drove me away from reading CT every day several years ago. And it was the increase in the typical snarky chowderhead comments that especially drove me from reading CT every day several years ago. I can read that kind of crap all over the web. Thoughtful, respectful, and informed comments, however, are rare.

Anything that sets the bar higher for commenting…that discourages commenting because it’s not the typical circle-jerks of bitch fests and self-congratulations for being smarter than the other guys—that’s a good thing.

The ten-to-one or more reader-to-lurker ratio is just as true for blogs as it was true for USENET, or wherever. Your commenters are not your audience. Your commenters can provide interesting additional content for your audience; but you have to create the right space and lead them to better commenting—you should certainly not pander to their worst habits. If you had a very strong ethos here among your commenters that included a sense of responsibility for quality commenting, then trends in the number of comments in various threads would be worth examining. As it is, number of comments is at best meaningless, and at worst indicative of bad posts, not good posts.

Klein’s also right about the incentives—it’s hard not to feel as if people aren’t interested in the serious stuff if they’re not commenting on it. But I don’t think there’s a good solution other than recognizing what’s going on and consciously discounting it.

Getting no feedback at all is always going to be a little disappointing. But I think that posters should look to the quality of the comments, not the quantity, for confirmation that their posts were worth the effort.

Aulus is banned.

What is the impact of the original poster returning to comment?

I would say this is very important for developing an interesting comment section; that seems to me to be a consistent difference between comment sections that contain responsive conversations, and ones that are merely a series of one-line reactions to the original post.

that seems to me to be a consistent difference between comment sections that contain responsive conversations, and ones that are merely a series of one-line reactions to the original post.

That’s an observation that never occurred to me, but seems correct. I’ve always wondered why so many smart, provocative bloggers have such crappy comments.

The proprietor needs to do both: respond to good comments in order to keep things hopping, and police the blog for destructive trolls. Yglesias does neither, DeLong does both, “Political Animal” seems to have changed policies since Drum (who was hands-off) left. An enormous difference.

I think part of the reason comments from the original poster change the atmosphere is that they’re flattering to the commenters being responded to — blog-commenting is one of the few venues where you can seek out someone’s writing because you think it’s clever and interesting rather than because of any pre-existing personal connection, and easily get the writer to notice and respond to your own thoughts. While this can turn unpleasant — there are some fairly big-name bloggers whose comments largely consist of people telling them what morons they are — it more often than not seems to be an incentive for the commenters to come up with more clever, interesting comments in the hopes of attracting more flattering attention from the blogger.

ABB1 comes to my blog.

I miss abb1.

Me too.

Posts that state a preference between two barely different choices that both have something to recommend them will get comments for days, especially if it something people encounter in their daily life. Didn’t cardinal vs relative directions come up recently? You can do that with paper book vs Kindle, over vs under toilet paper roll alignment, or any number of slight distinctions.

I find those discussions long and pointless, because the answer is “these are barely different options that both have something to recommend them”, but people have to weigh in. Fortunately, no one is making me read them.

Also, I adore Emerson’s comments.

One other factor came to my mind — issues to do with feminism/gender equality and labour force participation by mothers/parenting etc. also do attract a lot of comments. I guess it’s because we tend to have strong and conflicting views on this, and it has direct relevance for our own lives.

I tend to notice that posts about computer problems attract lots of comments. 95% of those comments are from people ignoring the problem and telling the blogger to buy a Mac, but they still count.

What amazes me is how much the ‘intertubes’ are populated by the same people that do know each other, including each other’s trolling habits and specific hide-outs, so much.

A couple of years back and long ago (mirc, remember those days) I had more time, and it gave me enorm pleasure to come ‘home’ on my ‘places’. I was the insider then. That’s probably as good a reason as any for high number of comments: the feeling of being an insider, being at home (I don’t know abb1 but her/his being missed is truely endearing, it literally moves me, no kidding).

But now for some fun to get this over 100 quickly: Mr John Emerson, how do you do it to be so all-present? Is it the God-reflex? How much hours does it take you? Is there a bit of money to be had? Seriously, John, I really want to know – if necessary I will troll over to your place once in a while!

I’m retired, and the internet is my TV.

John, I’m baffled: either I have to take my hat of or you have retired very young.

philosophers with a somewhat more cloistered vision of what philosophical discussion should involve

How politic.

“Property is theft!”

These days, every discussion eventually goes to AIG.

You might want to add self reflexive posts to the list. It seems kind of self-evident, but posts about how CT works are necissarily within the scope of CT readers. This seems to apply across the interwebs as well, since the easiest way to get a million people to join your facebook group is to call it “‘Facebook Sucks!”

I don’t understand why anyone on these academic-y blogs really cares about non-commenting readers. You don’t advertise. You presumably don’t hover over your hit counter, fantasizing about how many people you have informed. (Well, maybe you do. But if so, don’t tell us. TMI.) So who cares? They don’t really affect you in any way. They’re like the blog equivalent of people who don’t vote, in politics. Why not just imagine that you have ten times as many? Or a hundred times?

The exception, I suppose, is when something that you’ve put up affects the real world. That happens sometimes — for instance, I once made a Web page about a particular global warming denialist’s work (would have been on a blog, I guess, but blogs weren’t quite there yet) and when he was going to give Congressional testimony, a Congressional staffer googled him, found the page, called me, and I connected him to a climate scientist who I knew through Usenet who gave him expert questions to pass on to the Congressperson to ask that shot down the guy’s testimony. How often does that actually happen with the kind of blog posts that get no comments, though?

At any rate, long-term commenters are relatively rare. Actually, I’d guess that there are fewer of them than bloggers — perhaps an order of magnitude fewer. I still run into other commenters who were commenting on Usenet more than a decade ago.

64:

The very goal of bloggers or posters keeping commenters “disciplined, on topic, productive” outrages me.

Better? My mistake. I have no principled objections to commenters policing threads, using a different level of tools than the ones mainpage posters have. Commenters can’t delete, ban, disemvowel, etc.

67 comments and 2 identifiable as women.
Maybe one or two others with gender-unidentifiable pseudonyms are women as well, probably not though.
Maybe testosterone figures in that?
Male display. Competition. Compensation.
With rational cause tacked on afterward, sound as it might be.

One other feature of good comments sections: people who understand how to format their comments to make them readable, e.g. by including a space between paragraphs.

Roy Belmont, is there a particular reason you don’t want anyone to read your comments?

LizardBreath=Elizabeth. (I’m always surprised to find that’s not transparent.)

Some people grow up in warm, fuzzy, malice-deprived families, Liz. They’re always all Rodney King about everything, and invariably come to a bad end.

LizardBreath=Elizabeth was (is?) also in the funny papers (For Better, For Worse).

Lizard Breath, my roots in the patriarchal culture are clearly far too deep, my apologies. So three women. Out of I’m not counting how many individual posters.
Lemuel: No, none. Though apparently some people do, some of the time.
The code in this comment box is singularly dedicated to thwarting my normal online writing style, such as it is.
Having at least three early attempts at things like em dashes and blockquotes come up embarrassingly and awkwardly stricken-through and even more unintelligibly rendered than usual has thrown me back on arbitrary paragraphs and covertly rendered blank verse.
Not that I’m lodging an actual complaint. Per se/i>.
I just can’t afford to care anymore, you know?

Complaining. Not. me. About anything. Even this.

There are different metrics by which a comment thread can be “long” To wit: a) number of comments, the one apparently used here, b) how long the discussion continues measured by real time, and c) sheer mass of verbiage. I think b actually tells you more than a or c. A discussion that remains active more than two days typically has some kind of real discussion, or, usually, argument going. So it is probably really interesting or else a flamefest, but not so much something in between. And on this particular blog, pure flamefest is the lest likely possibility.

Let me add my voice to those who miss abb1. I think his comments here were *more* valuable than most, because much of what he said no one else was going to say, even approximately: he was not redundant with others.

Unfogged management deletes and bans very, very few people, but annoying persons can get a collective hostile response from people who are good at hostile responses.

I sorta miss Isle of Toads, though.

Admirers of Abba1 can find him in the comments at my blog, at my URL.

I also forgot to add that I will write a comment when I can tease atheists who present their belief as a considered intellectual opinion. It is not. Rather it is as intellectually indefensible as theism. The only valid intellectual position is agnosticism, because rational thought could never decide the question. I thought most people realized this by the age of 12 or 15. Nevertheless, atheism has become one of the intellectual prejudices of our time, and in its worst moments it is torpid and unseemly.

On existence questions, the default conclusion is non-existence. That’s my opinion.

I say unfogged loves John Emerson, and I think unfogged’s actions stand behind that.

The code in this comment box is singularly dedicated to thwarting my normal online writing style, such as it is.

Which reminds me — Roy, do you intentionally bear any resemblance in this style to D.H. Lawrence? I just finished reading Studies in Classic American Literature, and throughout I couldn’t help thinking of how similar it seemed to how you organize your statements and thoughts (in comments here at CT, at least). I figured, perhaps he was an inspiration of sorts?

I comment so that others may suffer as I do.

I’ll comment if I think I can add something to a discussion. Or, if I can’t, and can’t get back to sleep, I’ll just tell a joke.

I used to think that “Don’t criticize anyone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” was just a dumb cliche, but then I realized it means that that when you do criticize someone, you’re a mile away from them and you have their shoes.

Salient:
The only connection I have with Lawrence is a lower class upbringing, no higher education, a profound sense of dread and futility as regards human progress, wealthy dominant lovers, and no real income.
None of it’s intentional, but thanks.
I don’t write like this anywhere else. It’s an exercise, in character.
I like em dashes, used to use them a lot, but this particular comment box code has Pavlovianistically modified my spontaneous use of them. To my resentful irritation. Not that I’m complaining, officially, exactly.

I wrote a comment explaining why I did not comment that often, and why I missed Abb1, but I did not post it.

A good initial list by Henry plus some good additional suggestions.

An edit to the original #4 is anything having to do with anything Jewish. Some people don’t get that Jews and things Jewish are not necessarily synonymous with Israel.

This was already hinted at above, but I’ll add my vote: things having to do with teaching or other types of professionalization (e.g., grad school experiences) often have lots of comments and often really good ones that definitely augment the value of the original post.

At times, what the first one or two comments take on from the post can also influence where the thread goes (or doesn’t go). This is not necessarily unrelated to the original post, but I think can have a somewhat independent effect.

Also, I suspect we have way more male readers than female readers so I’ve sometimes wondered what kind of thread would result from certain types of posts…

Since we’re sorta voting, I miss abb1 too. I like John Emerson and should visit his blog to see him and abb1, though I also see abb1 pop up at other blogs I visit, like A Tiny Revolution and Unqualified Offerings.

Roy’s style is fascinating, but I don’t always have the patience to read through it.

The link in 102 is unpersuasive:

The key, as far as I’m concerned, is to realize that it’s quite valid to think of ‘5 items or less’ to imply an ellipsis: “5 items or less… [than that amount of shopping]”

“5 items” is not an “amount of shopping;” it’s a number of items.

Politicalfootball, you didn’t read all the way through. The key passage is:

“The OED shows that less has been used of countables since the time of King Alfred the Great — he used it that way in one of his own translations from Latin — more than a thousand years ago (in about 888). So essentially less has been used of countables in English for just about as long as there has been a written English language.”

Bloix, that’s very sweet of you, thanks. I would’ve commented on this thread earlier, but I was on a 15 hr flight when Henry posted it. (Back from Qatar, an experience worthy or blogging, but it’ll take me a while to figure out what angle to blog.)

Over time I’ve come to realize – often thanks to feedback I get in in-person encounters – that no or little commenting doesn’t necessarily mean no or little interest on behalf of readers. Plus given some of the types of comments, sometimes it’s just as well not to get too many.;-) That said, feedback can be helpful so I do encourage it if the inspiration strikes you.:)

in about 888

It was a barbaric time. Considerable progress has been made among the English-speaking peoples.

A (hopefully on-topic) solicitation: Any thoughts from bloggers (whether you blog on CT or elsewhere, of course) as to why you post a given entry?

I’d hypothesize answers to the above are reducible to two specific desires generating the necessary motivation: an urge to disseminate information or news, and an urge to initiate a discussion. Any blog post could introduce itself with either, “I believe some of you will want to know this. X, Y, Z.” Or, “Are you familiar with [this event or topic]? Here’s my take on it: X, Y, Z.” Since one’s opinion could be X, Y, Z under either of these categories — subjective information sought after by an audience, or a provocation to invite discussion — the motivation distinction is important.

I intuitively treat posts of the former (with comment sections) as a “talk amongst yourselves as necessary” and posts of the latter (with comment sections) as a “feel free to weigh in” scenario. Furthermore, in the former scenario I assume the post is a drop-and-go, for which it makes little sense to address the author directly; in the latter scenario one assumes the author of the post is reading over the comments at some later time. I think I only address the post’s writer directly if it’s clear they intended to generate discussion, as their principle motive. In the former, requests for further information (and comments sharing further information in response to those requests) seem to be the implied boundaries of reasonable on-topic response.

As a final note, I wonder if response patterns change when:
* Newest comments are posted first, or top-of-the-page.
* A limited number of comments are available for viewing without clicking or maneuvering further to see the additional comments.

See, there IS a testosterone issue.

And on a few levels, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

As a onetime associate of adequacy.org, I can confirm that the single comment-attractingest topic is the inferiority of AMD computer chips to Intel ones, and the general association of AMD chips with computer crime. It attracted over 9000 comments before we closed down the site. Even mentioning it this low down on a comments thread is a risk.

Here’s another comment for y’all.

I’d add a few patterns.

1) Shorter posts get more comments than longer posts.
2) Posts about the everyday life experiences of the poster get more comments but the comments tend to be very different depending on whether (a) the experience is a snarky, humorous one or (b) is a very serious, emotionally fraught one. (a) tend to create longer threads that bounce from story to story; (b) create long threads that contain short expressions of sympathy. Corollary: Eventually people stop expressing sympathy if the same poster has frequent experiences of a serious, bad or depressing nature, unless it is Scott Eric Kaufman being attacked once again by random strangers, automobile drivers, people fucking in his office or unsympathetic bureaucrats. But maybe SEK’s experiences are really 2a.
3) Posts which are seriously wrong get more comments. This is something I’ve discovered in teaching, too: a reading that has serious problems or errors (but is nevertheless interesting) is way more compelling to discuss for undergraduates than an impeccable work of scholarship. A post which is wacky, exaggerated, unreasonable, unpleasant or outright psychotic is way more likely to spark comments (as well as get links).

Threads that go meta and start to refer to the number of comments in the thread, especially with a goal (as in “let’s see if we can get to 150”) get a lot of comments. But only if there are already a lot of comments in the thread.

Acquiring one tenacious individual who is Wrong On The Internet helps.

PC vs MAC is a sure winner.

“Is Obama the AntiChrist?”

Was this solved?

Threatening to go on strike can be remarkably effective too. Although a bit drastic.