Is a Blog Without Comments a Blog?
ByIn light of the mildly anti-Semitic remark in the comments section here, and the CFLB’s less than honest approach to my comments system as a whole, I found this post by Joel Spolsky quite interesting:
You don’t have a right to post your thoughts at the bottom of someone else’s thoughts. That’s not freedom of expression, that’s an infringement on their freedom of expression. Get your own space, write compelling things, and if your ideas are smart, they’ll be linked to, and Google will notice, and you’ll move up in PageRank, and you’ll have influence and your ideas will have power.
When a blog allows comments right below the writer’s post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody … nobody … would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.
Spolsky’s thoughts were inspired by a longer post on the subject by Dave Winer (who, by the way, does not think a blog must have comments). I’m already late for my date with Galileo at NYPL, but I hope to give these articles the time they deserve later.
A blog without comments?
(PS Thanks for the tip, Nick!)
5 Comments
July 20th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Hey, Paul. The only time I really object to blogs without comments is when I want to respond to a post right this instant and can’t. I don’t think there’s anything inherently unbloglike about them. I suppose one could label them anti-democratic, or at least anti-populist, but, you know, who actually cares? One can always write letters …
July 20th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Interesting article over on the Grauniad today about Andrew Keen – the book looks quite interesting, no?
July 21st, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Clay Shirky wades to the defense of comments on Corante:
EiNY definitely does not operate at “large scale.”
In some ways, I think comments are what keep me going. They reaffirm that people are actually reading…and care enough to comment.
As for the quality of comments: Sure, there are always going to be spoilers, but as Curbed publisher Lockhart Steele points out in the comments section of Clay’s post:
That’s what’s so infuriating about the recent trolls and abuse. They don’t add anything to the debate at all.
But I’d rather let them in—and deal with them in my own time—than shut everyone out because of a handful of morons.
July 21st, 2007 at 10:19 pm
I guess part of the argument is the way in which you perceive your blog – mine is a cathartic stream of nonsense, and as such, I don’t worry at all about comments or hits. It is nice to have people drop in and take a look, but if there were no comments, it would not be the end of the world.
As well as simply spouting drivel, I have also conciously tried to avoid any inflammatory topics – fewer people will become as worked up about my hatred of Almodovar as will about the Arab-Israeli conflict, or US foreign policy (I would hope).
This is a problem with blogs and message boards, as the means of response are both public and instantaneous, they can be challenging, enlightening, fascinating, but also ill-judged, inflammatory or downright offensive. It is very easy for a discussion to be dragged down into name calling within a matter of minutes.
Keep keeping on, as a Mr C. Mayfield once sang.
July 21st, 2007 at 10:31 pm
To clarify, I wouldn’t consider shutting down comments at my place; I just don’t think there’s any philosphical bar against doing so.