July 12, 2003
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Why bloggers go into isolation
["On Screen"] At the height of its popularity, the insipid "Liberals/Leftists/Democrats do this, Conservatives/Right Wing/Republicans do that" genre produced an analysis suggesting political orientation had something to do with the tendency to allow comments on one's site. I don't remember where I read it, I only remember rolling my eyes. This is just an illogical method of suggesting that relentless revelation of 'the truth' by the 'good guys' in the comments is wearing the rightish/leftish blogger down.
Obviously, I don't think allowing comments has anything to do with political persuasion. It's more analogous to the tragedy of the commons. This author suggests as much in an analysis of Usenet:
A list is "push" technology: once you subscribe, all the messages arrive automatically; you do not do anything more to select or request them. The inevitable death of an open mailing list is dictated by the fact that you are purchasing a package of things-- messages--which arrive together. Since anyone is free to include a poison message in the lot, at some point the content of the entire list will lose interest, the good content outweighed by the bad.But whatever tragedy is experienced in the death of a mailing list bears no relationship to speech delivered via "pull" technology--in a bookstore or on the World Wide Web. As long as the speech I want is available and I am free not to select the speech I don't, there can be no tragedy of the commons. The existence of a disfavored sheep somewhere is not a tragedy of the commons unless its consequences are the wrongful death of my sheep. In a world where speech is delivered via "pull", my sheep and yours can co-exist.
The best form of blog feedback seems to be when someone else blogs on it on their own site. As this author suggests, the problem is that the comments (good and bad) are bundled together with an individual post , and email is pushed upon you. A link, however, is yours to follow, and the author's to "wear" on his own site.
The natural Usenet laws that apply to email and comment forums are less operative when people write on their own site. I believe this is because they have to place it in the context of their own writings and online identity-- there's less bluster, more proofreading and no attempt to simply achieve some kind of verbal graffiti. Finally, an entry on someone else's site doesn't seem to sit there demanding a response (because it is 'bundled' with your post) as it does when it's in your inbox or a post on your blog. Trackback is terrific, but doesn't seem to have critical network effect yet. That's one of the reasons I added a link to the Technorati link cosmos for each post here (by the way, thanks for the tech help with that, I'd be happy to share the two lines of php/MT tags that make it work).
Don't get me wrong, I'm really fond of many of our commenters, even (sometimes) those few whose mission in life is to point out the errors of our ways. Many have brought additional links or information to our attention that truly inform thinking about our posts. That's the real benefit of a comment section, the "more on this here" or "here's an added detail" sort of entry for those of us who might want to pursue a topic further.
The tendency to disallow comments, I believe, has everything to do with the above mechanisms, and rises with age of blog, traffic, attraction of a "Watch" crowd* and experience in public forums prior to blogging (i.e. Volokh and Reynolds). Some time ago, Steven Den Beste wrote a typically thoughtful post on why he shut down his forum:
What I've found is that for the last couple of months, Clueless Comments hasn't been a place that I myself felt like visiting. If it had been installed on someone else's server, I probably would have just stopped going to it entirely. But since it was mine and I had assumed the responsibility of keeping it working, I forced myself to visit it once a day. But instead of looking forward to that, I found it had become a chore, something I did out of obligation and wished I didn't have to. In fact, I don't remember the last time I actually felt like visiting it, or was glad I had afterwards.
Today I wandered over to Clueless and found Steven having second thoughts about receiving email, even a flood of positive email. Thankfully, I don't receive this volume of non-spam email (at home, anyway), but I can imagine it beginning to weigh on you.
Clueless was one of my first big-time perma-links when I had my own site. I won't write to Steven, but this is obviously a supportive blog entry. Thank Qualcomm stock for reaching a multiple of 233X earnings in 1999, and thank Steven for Clueless. Feel better Cap'n.
* Let's give credit where credit is due to the founders of Warbloggerwatch. First among......
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at July 12, 2003 9:56 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksI'm more inclined to visit sites that do allow comments. I realize that this invites abuse at times, but it also enlarges the circle of commmentary to folks who lack the time, money or resourcefulness to have a blog of their own. In much the same way as I am interested in the Letters to the Editor of newspapers, I am interested in the thoughts of everyday folks, including the malcontents and mischiefmakers.
IMHO, it's silly to care whether a site doesn't have comments, since it is often an issue of the reader base being so large that the comments would get out of hand and require constant monitoring. Look how insane the LGF comments threads are -- that's what Instapundit (or another big blogger) would have to put up with if he had comments. The LGF guy like that, and more power to him, but not everyone wants to run a flame-and-troll board.
There are certainly drawbacks to allowing comments. However, I think a comments section reduces the email to the blog author. If Mindles posts something and mentions that "Blitzen" is a German adjective, I can post a correcting comment if I feel strongly about it. Since I would (hopefully) read other comments first, Mindles is saved from a couple of dozen "friendly" corrections, and the rest of us can move on to more important problems ("that tie!").
I wonder if part of Den Beste's fear and loathing as he opens his emailbox is because he feels he should answer each piece? I've sent him email, and didn't expect a reply (though in fact he sends one more often than not). Maybe just posting "I appreciate your email but I cannot reply to it, except via Clueless essays" would go far to reduce his F&L?
Frankly, I find the thoughts expressed in this article running counter to everything that I value most about the blogosphere.
It seems to me that there are two ways in which a blogger can view his role: either as an authority, delivering a sermon from on high to the unenlightened masses, or as a facilitator of enlightened discussion, a Madame de Stael of the Internet. Maybe it's all that democratic indoctrination at work within my head, but I think the latter model far more valuable than the former. The world has never lacked for would-be authorities, but good conversation, with the power to enlighten the participants, is awfully hard to come by.
Rather than view readers' comments as a burden with which one out to put up, it seems to me that the proper attitude would be to recognize them as the very raison d'etre of posting. If one thinks of one's readers as guests at a gathering in one's home, then a post that sparks a flurry of commentary would be the after-dinner conversation extending late into the night, the surest sign that one has succeeded in stimulating the readers.
The presence or absence of commenting certainly makes a big difference in terms of where I choose to spend my reading time. For instance, while I may be more on Glenn Reynolds' side of the political aisle than I am on Brad DeLong's, I pay much closer attention to the latter's blog than the former's. Not only do I find DeLong more intellectually stimulating, but the commenters on his blog are often both extremely well-informed and insightful, so that I frequently learn more from them than I do from the actual posts that provoke their comments. What is more - and this is particularly noteworthy for those who would seek to shape opinion - in the course of the give and take, I sometimes come to change my viewpoint! That would never happen if I were simply reading a missive from some unapproachable deity.
Hmm. Commenters don't behave like guests in your living room. They do on their on blog. I tend to view the blogosphere itself as the "Salon", not my comment thread. Certainly no blogger is an unapproachable deity. That is indeed part of the point of blogs vs. big media.
As an illustration, I submit this comment thread for your perusal. I was able to find some humour in it, but it isn't always fun to host this sort of stuff.
"Commenters don't behave like guests in your living room. They do on their on blog. I tend to view the blogosphere itself as the "Salon", not my comment thread."
The problem is that there are hidden assumptions at work here that make such a stance problematic.
The first assumption is that everyone has a blog or is willing to create one, simply to respond to a post you've made. I'd wager that even with the number of people who now have blogs of their own, there are still many more readers than there are posters.
The second troublesome assumption is that there are no costs associated with finding these responses, assuming they are indeed out there somewhere. Not everyone has a blog with Trackback, or knows how to generate pings for Blogger posts. How will such people make their views known, other than by emailing you a link to their blogs? Are you really willing to go check each and every such message out and append the new link to your posts?
The third issue, and the most challenging in my view, is that you ignore the combinatorial nature of conversation. Once one moves from a model with a centralized meeting-place to one where every blog responds to every other, you have a combinatorial explosion on your hands. Where N people might have had a discussion in the comments section of a single blog, we have up to N*(N-1)/2 links to follow up. This simply isn't practical once the number of participants goes beyond a very modest size.
"As an illustration, I submit this comment thread for your perusal. I was able to find some humour in it, but it isn't always fun to host this sort of stuff."
I can see why anyone would be upset by what clearly seems to be harassment via email, but that seems to me to be more of an argument against posting one's email address on a public forum, rather than a problem with commenting per se. It also seems to be the case that people are more willing to say all sorts of insulting things via email than they are likely to do in a more clearly public arena. Yes, there are people who troll comments sections, but there's nothing like being slapped down by several people to rob a nuisance of his perverse satisfaction.
In closing, I'll also say that what the blogging world seems to be in need of is some means of limiting commentators to those whose identities can be verified in some way, if only for the sake of raising the costs of misbehavior. MetaFilter is onto something in this regard, though I find it just a little bit too cozily closed-off myself.
"there's nothing like being slapped down by several people to rob a nuisance of his perverse satisfaction."
Not my experience at all. Responsed often feed the trolls.
Comments moderation is hard. It consumes time and choosing comments to delete or IPs to ban often doesn't feel as open-and-shut as you'd like.
Starting a blog is easy and relatively cheap. As far as "appending the link" that's what I'm trying to achieve with Technorati. If I could figure out how to do the same with Blogdex I would.
If people don't know how to use the tools of the medium, that's their problem IMO.
I should add to that last comment that bloggers fall all over themselves to provide technical support to each other ( I have been on both ends), and Google can answer all simple blogging questions.
The most expensive part of blogging is the ISP, but you need that to comment, don't you?
“I wonder if part of Den Beste's fear and loathing as he opens his emailbox is because he feels he should answer each piece?”
I think you just hit the nail on the head! Pity the poor blogger who feels obligated to answer each piece of e-mail. This will definitely put one in a despondent mood. I learned long ago that I cannot respond to everyone. Den Beste probably has to concede that he can’t either.
You may have seen the original no-comment observation at CalPundit.
Comments are Closed.