Meh, 24 hours is too long to wait. By that time, I likely no longer care to read any comments on the subject, so they all go unread. I mean who is going to return to a blog post a day later just so they can read comments? Might as well just leave the comments off. Let's face it, the author is still working through his trauma from a time when he apparently left comments unmoderated and unrestricted and got burned, and this is his therapy. He's making his way back into the social, but he's taking baby steps.
Also, when you're boasting of feats like inventing blog comments, you might be slightly more prone to being trolled than your average blogger.
I feel that comments on blogs themselves are slowly being replaced by comments on sites such as HN, Reddit, etc. I notice again and again, at least with personal blogs, that a post with 90 comments on HN will only have two or three comments on the post on the original site. Additionally the posts on HN are more likely to be negative than the posts on the original site.
Perhaps it is because people feel less inhibited when they are posting their thoughts in another neutral space. If the author of the article doesn't want to be trolled or flamed on his own site then why not just link to the HN discussion, as I have seen other bloggers do?
If your post is controversial or interesting people will discuss it, and you can do nothing to stop it, because closing comments on the main site will just cause people to discuss it on another site, as this HN post is proving.
I've done more or less what you suggest, I have comments 'off' on my blog but do follow the comments on the HN threads. I used to post whatever I had to say as a 'link less post' but people were complaining about reading light gray on dark gray.
I think that those that disagree with you are your best teachers though, what would you rather have, a hundred people going 'yes' or 3 that disagree with you and get a conversation going?
"Additionally the posts on HN are more likely to be negative"
What exactly do you mean? That people do not comment on here, ohh this is brilliant, we love you, you're our god, even if the guy said something obvious or something which isn't brilliant at all, or do you mean that here people write down their thoughts as they are not biased. I do not see why the latter would necessarily mean negative however? There are criticisms, but are reasonable criticisms something negative?
I think posts here are positive, even for the owner of the site, unless he takes it personally. You know, its just business :P
I am just referring to a general trend that I have noticed in submitted articles, after comparing HN comments with on-site comments for the past year or so.
On HN you are more likely to see nitpicks or deconstructions of the article, even criticisms of the person who wrote the article. Also the best way to get upvotes is often to criticize the article submitted and point out a flaw.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing... I'm just sharing my observations.
That makes some sense to me, and I think I'm somewhat more negative on 3rd-party comment sites than on bloggers' own sites as well. On a blogger's site, it feels like I'm writing a reply to the blogger, which I make more effort to try to keep constructive, soften negative points, make sure to balance them with positive ones, etc. On a 3rd-party site it feels like I'm writing a comment for the site's own community, not really directed at the author, who often isn't present (e.g. I doubt NYTimes journalists are here reading our comments on their articles).
The fact that they are sometimes present makes that a little tricky, and maybe requires recalibration. Traditionally, I was able to assume that an author of an external blog post wasn't part of the community, because if they were, they would've just posted their post in the community instead. For example, in the heydey of Kuro5hin, if you were part of the community, you most often subumitted your articles to K5. If something was linked externally instead of published on K5, you could assume it probably wasn't by a community member. Same on Usenet--- if you were writing an article as part of a community, you posted it to the community. And I think it does make sense for discussions to have a different tone when the author is present and engaging versus when they aren't.
It's a separate (though related) issue, but I think there are real advantages to that kind of community-centric site, where the discussion and the articles make up the community, instead of the HN-style collection of on-site discussion and off-site blog posts, some of which are by community members and some of which aren't (with no easy way of distinguishing, unless you remember which URLs are blogs of HN members).
I'm not sure why someone who posts a comment would have to return 24 hours later to sniff their own droppings in order for the comment to have value. (I'm responding to "Might as well just leave the comments off" here). That perspective might make sense if 100% of a blog entry's audience arrives within its first day, but I would wager that the bulk of any blog entry's audience are lurkers who arrive later.
If that's truly the case, then it feels like it would be rewarding the lurkers and penalizing the loyal readers, as the lurkers would get a much faster effective response rate.
But by far the worst offense to me is that it kills the community aspect, elevating the words and whims of the blogger much too high above the rabble's hobbled forum; they should consider themselves lucky to have been tossed these few scraps. Who wants to invest their time contributing to such a stodgy environment?
I agree with respect to the proposed stodgy environment, but I find it strange to suggest that lurkers are, a priori, somehow less loyal than chatterboxes. To me loyalty and a willingness to post are orthogonal to each other, for the most loyal reader I can imagine is someone who comes every day to check for something new and expects nothing out of the exchange beyond what they read, and one can also easily imagine drive-by commenters who never return again, or - worse still - those who persist and actively drag down the forums in myriad ways.
I wonder what it is about the web that makes people forget and/or denigrate the silent majority. It seems to be something unique about the web, mind you, because no one would imagine that the handful of cranks who write weekly letters to a newspaper's editor are, ipso facto, its longest-running subscribers - except, perhaps, the cranks themselves. Maybe I've just answered my own question there.
Actually, if you came back 24 hours later, it wouldn't even to see responses to your own comment (since nobody can see it during that period): it would be purely to see if other people commented.
What a sad, sad prospect. I certainly hope the blogosphere never goes there.
>1. A fixed commenting period for each post of 24 hours. Permanent link to this item in the archive.
>2. Until the period expires, none of the comments would be visible to other commenters. Permanent link to this item in the archive.
Seems pretty clear to me that for 24-hour period following a post, comments can be made, but are invisible. After 24 hours, comments are made visible, but can no longer be made.
#5 on the blog makes this more clear - #1-#5 really explain this concept.
> "If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your rebuttal there."
This is actually the common mode of conversation in one area of the academic blogosphere I follow, and it's annoying as hell. I would definitely not want it to become a common model.
Instead of centralizing a discussion in comments somewhere, I have to follow a web of "Just writing a quick note in reply to Michael here" and trackbacks and whatnot amongst 5-8 blogs that usually participate in the conversation. If you're not following it in real-time, it's especially annoying to try to reconstruct the conversation, versus if it were in one blog's comments, or a web forum somewhere, or on a mailing list, or anything else other than 5-8 people with separate blogs replying to each other on their own blogs. In this case, though, it's less due to blog authors not wanting comments (most have them on), and more due to the repliers always thinking their reply is so important that it has to be kicked up to a reply-post, rather than living as a mere blog comment.
I do like the "blogs are publishing" analogy he uses, but for negative reasons: instead of people conversing directly, this model of "reply on your own blog" results in the equivalent of everyone printing up broadsides or pamphlets with their ideas. So you print your pamphlet, and if someone disagrees, they print their own, and instead of 5 people discussing things, you have 5 pamphleteers scattering their dueling pamphlets around town.
Nonetheless, the old model of publishing documents on the web seems fine, but I don't see why it should be in blog format then. If you have a document that's worth "publishing", imo it should usually be of somewhat lasting interest, and you should pick a format other than reverse-chronological-order to organize your published documents (though it's fine to have a "recent documents" list to direct frequent readers to what's new).
The "blog post as direct response" model works really well on Tumblr.
Everywhere else it only works at the extreme ends — for total takedowns like the recent Kurzweil/Myers dustup and friendly 'Sue's post on x inspired me to post this on y', but not anything in between. Trackbacks were the worst thing to come out of SixApart, and those guys were chock full of bad ideas. Basically tailor-made for spam.
To me this is a very old school, closed off way of looking at things. Who are the comments for? Just the author? If so, why make them public at all? If they are for the readers, how many readers are going to come back 24 hours later to check out the comments?
The idea that if you disagree or have a lot to say you should create your own blog post is also a bit ridiculous. Is it OK in that case to leave a comment saying "I have responded to this on my blog here at xxxxxxx"? I mean, how is the context between the original post and the followup to be maintained or even seen by the original readers?
This just seems to be more of a throwback to old school print where the interconnectedness of ideas was severely limited. Unless you were aware of and read all publications on a subject you were likely to see the entire "conversation" on a subject.
I guess if you want to see a blog article as a publication that's your prerogative, but there is a reason print media is dieing out. We should be trying to increase the interconnectedness of ideas, not stifle it.
The idea that if you disagree or have a lot to say you should create your own blog post is also a bit ridiculous.
Indeed. If you want interesting conversations about your blog posts, have commenting (threaded is better; saves a lot of time). If you don't, just don't have them.
Quote: "I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think they're publications. And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts. If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your rebuttal there."
Something about this rubs me the wrong way-- probably the fact that it assumes that rebutting a post doesn't add any value. If I (or Dave Winer) post about something and completely mischaracterize what it is, how it functions, what it means, etc., a comment that rebuts that mistake is certainly quite valuable. It gives the author a chance to revise or reconsider his opinion or take on the matter.
A blog post disagreeing with a high-profile author like Dave Winer is unlikely to have the same kind of impact, especially when it comes from a low-profile site (which, let's face it, most blogs are). It is far too easy for an author to ignore dissenting posts at other sites than it is a highly-visible comment that appears directly under the post in question.
IMHO, Dave Winer is a particularly bad comment moderator-- he routinely removes comments that disagree with his opinions simply because of that disagreement. Anecdotally, I no longer comment at Scripting News precisely because he banned my OpenID from the site when I disagreed with one of his more volatile political posts. Not particularly strong evidence, I know, but it is a routine event at SN to see Winer completely shut down or remove posts that differ with his opinions.
Now, as Winer is fond of saying, those dissenters are certainly capable of starting a free blog an any number of free services (or going so far as to transform an old PC into a Wordpress site of their very own), but, as I've mentioned before, this certainly doesn't merit the same level of visibility that posting a comment does.
All of which is to say: I read the above and don't necessarily see Winer trying to "improve" his site. I see him trying to justify marginalizing those who disagree with him.
I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think they're publications.
Why does there have to be a strict dichotomy between these two things? It's not uncommon to see conversations happen (very slowly) through traditional publications and everything posted online is, in a sense, published.
My first thought when reading this is that this evolves into a "battle rap" scenario where bloggers rebut one another via their medium, blog posts (rap songs), rather than just talking directly in the comments. I think that got 2pac and Notorious B.I.G. shot.
I think blogs can at once be a publishing medium and also a host for conversation - and why they can't crosspolinate seems ridiculous to me. Winer seems a bit too obsessive-compulsive about his comment system - just let it be what it is, a place for conversation. That, or close it. He cares and talks wayyy too much about it - it's not that serious.
Maybe there are some deep-rooted self esteem issues under there somewhere?
Or just turn off comments altogether and let people comment on HN (et al). This happens inevitably, right? Many times the comment thread for an article is actually longer and more rich here than on the source website itself.
If bloggers want the discussion to happen on their blogs and not on HN or reddit, then they really need to offer something better than HN or reddit. Hell if you can't even do threaded comments or something similar to make it easier to follow the flow of discussion, it is obvious to me that you don't care too much about getting comments.
That's just tuning parameters, there's nothing groundbreaking there. The title should be something more like:
Proposal: Sane defaults for blog commenting system
Still, commenting (if at all) should be very specific to character of the site commented upon. Like, for example, do you enable replying and threading? That's something that's very dependant on community dynamic.
Personally I think you should leave commenting and discussion for more ‘local’ communities — like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. Internet's just too big to aggregate all people's opinions on your site. And you can gain some more visiblity that way, too.
I really like Andrew Sullivan’s simple system, soliciting readers to comment via email and then selectively publishing those he believes create and add to an ongoing conversation.
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution has an interesting real-world analogue when he has to deal with q&a during his public speaking event. He believes that people are behaving in status-seeking ways and so forces people who want to ask questions to write them down and pass them up where he answers them anonymously[1]. Winer's 24-hour limit seems to be partially addressing this problem as well, but I agree with the comments already posted about that being too much time to care.
One possible solution I'm thinking about implementing in a new blog I'm starting is a separate Twitter comments account. This forces brevity and accountability among other things, and people could link to their own posts or places where my posts are (hopefully) being discussed. In addition, if the blog is successful, I could potentially see what comments are being retweeted, etc. and run some quick and dirty analytics to help determine high-value comments. Additional benefits would be connecting with high-value readers in a more intimate way that could improve dialogue as well as gently guide users to providing comments via email for longer dialogues. I'm concerned that 140 characters is too short to provide feedback, though the majority of comments I post on non-conversational sites seem to fit into that range.
Any thoughts?
[1] Sorry, I can't find a link to the article so I'm paraphrasing heavily.
Why not grab the users Mac address and IP and award them a badge based on each comment they leave? A disqus like startup can add such a system and the badges would range from extremely positive to extremely negative (hateful useless troll).
Perhaps an intermediate site, that you log into with an OpenID, and which then gives you a new OpenID that has some form of ranking/karma system enabled?
Or- Just a standardized method to track karma/ranking across disparate sites? Maybe an extension to OpenID, feedback for feedback?
The only obstacle I see, is how the information would be conveyed. Without the participation of the hosting site, it would be little more than a static link.
Ah yeah it's been awhile since I took a networking class; more into front end coding these days & start-ups.
I guess even the IP address since it's based by router would not be completely effective, especially in large companies. Though it could gather that there a lot of trolls at one company or organization. Thinking of recent Yahoo/Skype debacle and that guy losing his job over trolls.
My prediction: he implements his experiment for a few weeks, notices that nobody comments on his posts any more and then he backpedals.
If you don't already know Dave Winer, he's very bitter about not getting the recognition that he thinks he's owed (read the first sentence of the linked article, it's actually quite representative of the guy) so he keeps coming up with these "revolutionary" new things in the hope to invent something.
Every blog post, every URL, and every domain should have it's own forum. Make that forum universal enough, fast enough, and easy enough to use, and you have the twitter of forums.
This has been blatantly obvious to me for about 4 years now. The only reason I don't pursue it is because I get distracted by easier and more interesting "low hanging fruit".
This removes any real incentive to comment on an article as well as any use comments may provide (as they aren't going to be viewed when the largest traffic occurs but rather when people are looking through archives or revisiting old posts).
If your incentive for commenting is to be seen by others rather than provide feedback to the author, you're exactly the kind of commenter he wasn't interested in seeing:
"I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think they're publications. And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts. If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your rebuttal there."
I haven't ever commented on a blog but I was responding more to this:
> And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts.
Which you have quoted there. The value shouldn't just be for authors it should be for everyone, HN comments can add value to posts as well as value to the posts' authors but choosing one over the other seems silly to me.
If he doesn't want comments to be valuable to the community (can't really think of a better word) who reads his blog then he could simply add a contact me to the bottom of the page like Mark Pilgrims blog posts show after a while.
Did you just read his moderation guidelines? The actual proposal is further down on the page. I'm not aware on any blog using that approach, so I'm not sure what you mean by "well-followed".
The Internet possesses and endless and continual discussion about a million topics.
A blog post is the author's prompt to gain focus in the ongoing (and evergoing) discussion to a particular topic, and relative to the author's given position.
It's like a button sewn into the conversation fabric. It's also part of the fabric and it has a little more gravity than a comment thread.
I should clarify. It's more that the old newspaper/publication opt-ed mindset where a columnist writes a piece that goes out to readers in a one-way form of communicating that doesn’t facilitate responses easily, has given way to a more open exchange of thoughts between reader and/or author. It’s his blog and his rules of course, but I don't see the value in discouraging a full-on discussion that may arise out of something compelling which someone wrote. I’d like to think that’s one of the great things about blogging, in that it democratizes the development and sharing of ideas.
Also, when you're boasting of feats like inventing blog comments, you might be slightly more prone to being trolled than your average blogger.