Ever read something on this site and feel like you need to respond? Apparently, you’re not the only one.
In the past two weeks, I have received at least ten emails or Twitter messages asking me why I have disabled comments on Eloquation I Tell Stories; most of them requested that I open up comments and allow the conversation to grow around my writing.
I’m thinking about it. But before I do, some context…
Learning from history
I disabled the ability comment on individual posts on Eloquation just over a year ago. (I have, however, always allowed people to leave trackbacks or pingbacks to any post on the site.) There were three core reasons behind my decision at that point:
- My blog was a personal publishing platform: While many argue that the blog is a space for conversation on the web, my primary goal in creating Eloquation (or Wholesome Goodness or On A Day Like Today, the iterations that came before this one) was to have place to publish my thoughts and my writing on the web. I was using other spaces on the internet to initiate conversation and discussion.
- People had other places to respond: I’ve always been a big fan of the concept of trackbacks. Creating a cross-linked compendium of related ideas (rather than collapsing ideas in one comment thread) across the web feels like a much richer way to create conversation to me. In the past little while, I’ve experimented with adding Technorati links or Twitter replies to my posts as well, to show how conversation happens outside the blog.
- Nobody was leaving comments: There’s only so many “Comments (0)” you can see on a page. Of course, I knew that this is largely my own fault: if the content I create isn’t engaging enough to incite conversation, then I shouldn’t be expecting many replies. That being said, the content was personally important enough for me to publish it, so the compromise was to remove the option for commenting altogether.
That’s some context as to why the comments disappeared. But should they come back?
Learning from others
I’m not the first to have this internal debate over the validity of comments on a blog. There’s a multitude of opinions on both sides of the fence.
Dave Winer most famously said:
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.
Echoing those thoughts, Joel Spolsky has said:
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.
Russell Beattie agrees with my thoughts on disparate conversations:
What these people don’t get is that I wrote a post on my weblog, they read it and responded on their weblog, and now I’m responding to them again here. That’s a conversation - no comments needed.
Of course, people like Jeff Atwood vehemently argue for the other side:
If readers want to have a public dialog with you, then your readers must have blogs of their own. This strikes me as awfully elitist. […] Are you really comfortable saying, in effect, unless you have a blog I am not interested in what you have to say?
Mathew Ingram, of course, sums up the other side’s argument well:
What makes most blogs interesting isn’t so much the great things that the writer puts on there (as much as I like to hear the sound of my own voice), but what kind of response it gets, and how that develops, and who carries it on elsewhere on their own blog.
Needless to say, there really hasn’t been any real consensus as to necessity of having comments on a blog yet. And that’s why I need your help.
Learning from you
What do you think? Do you think I should bring comments back on I Tell Stories? Should I open up comments on all posts, or just selected content? Should I keep allowing trackbacks?
I’m opening up comments on this post to see if any of you have some thoughts about the topic. Feel free to contact me through Twitter, email, SMS, or trackback if you feel so inclined.
there have been a couple of posts of yours in the past that i wished i could have commented on, but not had enough to write to really warrant a whole blog post of my own. maybe i should set up a blog specifically for leaving trackbacks on others’ blogs? that might be kind of interesting anyway.
and then there’s the comment spam issue, which can be a headache…
There are lots of ways to deal with some of the comment headaches. Akismet handles comment spam really well. There are also plugins that can turn off comments selectively on certain posts, or after a period of inactivity. I’m also experimenting with the Disqus plugin, which attempts to gather comments made by one person across the blogosphere and have them all in one place (only works with blogs that have installed the plugin, alas).
So, from a technical, maintenance perspective, comments aren’t that onerous to manage. Philosophically, however, you have to decide whether you want to allow people to contribute on “your” space or on their own.
Personally, writing a blog post in response seems to require a lot more effort on my part, both from a time perspective and just in terms of organizing my thoughts more carefully. In a comment, I feel like I’m just “responding” whereas to post to my own blog, I feel like I have to have some unique thought. Maybe there’s no real difference, but to me, the context is more immediate if I comment right here.
I hope you come to a resolution that you and your readers will be happy with!
i’d have to say that a big part of blogging for me are the comments and the conversations that emerge as a result. granted that’s my MO, and everyone has their ‘druthers.
regardless, i’m glad you’ve enabled comments, if only so i can thank you for the lovely post after ICE08, which was very sweet!
yay to you - good luck with this experiment. :)
I love that you quoted Matthew Ingram because I had an interesting conversation with him about comments at the Mesh meetup last week. One of the things that we talked about was that how blogs were so different from newspaper and magazine articles because of the readers’ ability to interact with writers! I think that you are one of those writers that people genuinely would like to interact with and they have a chance to through comments.
Commenting - I don’t do a lot of it, though commenting is turned on for all my blogs. I, too, am fascinated by what evokes responses and what doesn’t.
However, in terms of what YOU should do… I’d like you to keep them on so I can occasionally leave insightful comments like “Hell, ya!”, “Nice post” and “Falling in love again, eh?” Just so you know I’m reading.
I am in favour of having comments open on your blog since I, too, would have liked to have commented in the past. Comments I would have wanted to make did not necessarily fit in with the focus of my own blog, so I would not be likely to post a response there. As well, there are a lot of folks who don’t have blogs who like to comment.
I can understand the frustration of not receiving comments. We see the well-known blogs that get 10, 20, 70 comments per post and feel underwhelmed when we get no comments on most posts. But, it depends on our readership, and as you say whether what you are writing warrants a response. My readers tend to be in law and/or librarians, both of which have a tendency to shy away from public comments. And yet, when I meet readers in person they give me positive feedback.
If spam isn’t a concern, and you are not necessarily into a lot of comments anyway, why not leave it open and see what you get? I actually find that with posting about my blog posts via Twitter, I get a lot more response from my posts, so that is one thing that probably has changed over a year ago for you as well.
Namaste,
Connie
Open comments up for a while, and see how you like it. I’ve been itching to comment here so many times I’ve lost track (and the moment lost). :)
Thanks for the thoughts everyone! Just a few comments:
@bunnyhero @James - Luckily, spam isn’t much of a problem for me. Akismet works fine, so I’m not concerned about being overwhelmed by bad comments.
@James @Connie - You both make a good point about the effort required for (and the validity of) posting a reply on your own blog. Sometimes it is easier just to leave a few lines on the post itself: I’ve felt that way myself sometimes.
@Everyone - Thanks for all the support. It’s always nice to know that people are actually engaged and interested in the content I create, and I appreciate you all.
In that vein, I think the best course of action for now is for me to try it out for a little while and see how it goes and how it feels.
Thanks again. =)
I would say at least enable it on certain posts
i think if you opened up comments i’d come back more frequently.
…and possibly try to sell you viagra.
Some thoughts from Twitter:
inkedmn: I let anybody comment, but have a nice beefy comment spam system running under the hood. works well for me.
counti8: I certainly feel that twittering you is more intrusive and less public than interaction thru comment functionality.
RyTron: content doesn’t have to be engaging to bring convos. It just has to piss people off enough. The idea the blogs NEED comments is dumb.
RyTron: what i meant was *getting* comments aren’t a requirement. Just get rid of the code that displays the number of comments.
AdamSchwabe: Comments are what make and break most blogs. The interaction is usually necessary for me to be engaged as a reader.
A nice comment can make your day.
Honestly Sameer, there were many many times I wanted to leave a comment on your blog and was disappointed that you had shut them off. I even remember mentioning it to you at some point before.
Leave it on i say.
I agree with the comment above, if you leave comments open, it would drive more traffic back to your site.
You’re completely right Zach, a nice comment can make your day. That’s enough of a reason to enable them, right?
Oh, and Michele? No need to thank me. Much deserved.
So I think this is what I’m going to do: I’m going to enable comments on posts where I feel there can be some good discussion. On posts where I just want to have a bit of a personal soapbox, I’ll shut them down. That way, I get the best of both worlds.
Of course, I’ll try this out for a little while and see how it goes.
Thanks again to everyone!
I’ve gotta swing in favour of the comments on this one, too. I had no comments on my blog for, in retrospect, the majority of its life - the first six or seven years! When I finally enabled them in ‘05, I wouldn’t say it was an overwhelming flood of response material from the readership, but you never know when a post is going to break away and generate some good conversation. (“Good” conversation on my blog is 6 comments; “runaway” conversation is anything over 12.:)
There have been few instances of comment on my blog where I didn’t feel the commenter was adding something to the content.
And definitely, I’ve been on Eloquation enough times wishing I could leave a note on something, for me to say it would be worthwhile having the comments back.
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Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language ;)
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
I just love sitting down on a SUnday morning having a coffee and doing some work. Makes you feel that the rest of the week is going to be just as exciting….. wait on…. I’m going to New York tomorrow. WAHOO!