Following my last post about blog comments, a couple of posts have popped up in my feed reader about the topic. Firstly James Cridland ponders what makes him decide to leave a comment on a blog, or use his own blog to respond:
First, this reply is going on a bit, and it would be quite difficult to leave this in Martin’s blog comments anyway. (Because I’ve used more than one link here, it probably would be regarded as spam, too). A reply in my blog affords me the space to reply.
Second, by my blogging here as a reply to Martin’s post over there, it means that those that read my blog are aware of Martin’s posting. If I’d have just posted on Martin’s blog, nobody would be aware of Martin’s posting. The extra addition of Google Juice, etc, also is a good thing for both of us.
Third, this is just as relevant a posting as many of my others here; if people really want to read my witterings here (as apparently quite a few do), then it’s probably just as useful to them to read this reply.
Length of response is definitely an issue for me when deciding whether to comment or post. The second point is also an important one, I think, especially in terms of the visibility of a conversation.
John Naughton also picked up the theme today, answering those that have wondered why he doesn’t allow comments on his excellent blog. His three reasons are that he lacks time to moderate and answer comments; that his blog is predominantly a resource for capturing his own thoughts for his own purposes, rather than being a conversational exercise; and finally John quotes a Dave Winer post:
Do comments make it a blog? Do the lack of comments make it not a blog? Well actually, my opinion is different from many, but it still is my opinion that it does not follow that a blog must have comments, in fact, to the extent that comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual, comments may act to make something not a blog.
Interesting. I’m starting to think that the ideal situation would be that everyone has their own blog, and we respond to one another using our own platform, and don’t use comments.
The trouble is that not everyone has, or probably ever will have, their own blogs. So those that actively want feedback have to make the facility available – no matter how unsatisfactory it might be.
Of course, some of us quite like the attention of a good comment on our blogs… which is perhaps why I allow them… 😉
Spot on James – there’s nothing like the thrill of finding out that somewhere out there someone is taking so much notice that they actually want to leave a comment…
So, er, thanks!
Second James. Blogs can be pretty lonely places without dialogue. I’m all for comments on my blog rather than pieces written elsewhere. But I like your idea of somehow aggregating your comments elsewhere on your blog. Could be done manually of course but it can’t be that hard to create?
People have mentioned CoComment, but it does look a little clumsy to me. Am still investigating…
Guess you want some kind of equivalent to Delicious links entries with the content pulled from Technoratis. Something like ‘other appearances by moi elsewhere on the great unwashed interweb’
Exactly. Even better if your comments are automatically posted to Twitter too…