No Comment

It’s time for the semi-annual tech blog “Comments are horrible!” series of posts. And here’s mine!

Do you have something to say in response to someone? Own your words. Post it on your blog, or on Google+, or even Twitter (or email if you must share privately) and notify the writer via Twitter or email. Tumblr asks & messages are a great way too (particularly with their fan mail feature coming up) for sharing with Tumblr bloggers. If they’re thoughtful replies or useful additions, that blogger should - if he/she is good people - mention you in an update.

I do have a couple points to make, though. First, what I see too often is that replies are only linked to if the original blog poster has something to say about it. Not every post is something you can add to, though. There’s a trap with blogging that applies to comments too: the idea that you can’t link to something unless you have useful commentary to add to it. I don’t agree with it - good replies should be worthy of promotion regardless of what you can think you can add to it.

I think it would be very cool if blogs without comments had, underneath each article, a list called “Great Replies” and then a list of hyperlinks to various replies that the blogger added because he/she thought they were great reads. It allows you to promote valuable input without having to think about it. The only downside is that doing this with Tumblr is fairly difficult since you basically have to add the links to the post itself - maybe that’s a feature to request.

Of course, that gets into the argument of whether you should be promoting people who reply to you. I don’t have a problem with it personally - if the input is good, then I think it’s deserving of promotion - but I can understand how some might think this is just feeding readers who already feel too entitled. I think popular bloggers who promote others who write good words are doing the right thing - they aren’t giving away their attention to others, they’re sharing it with them, and nothing rewards a good writer like a burst of attention.

My second point: if you have the time and patience, perhaps moderated comments aren’t so bad. You’ll have to deal with more input, good and bad, than without comments, as the barrier to entry is lower. However, you still control the message and discussion on your own site. The benefit is the same as the downside: the barrier to entry is lower, so you get more feedback, and if you don’t get much feedback then maybe it’s not a bad idea.

My blog currently averages, oh, 40 hits per post and has 250 followers, so my barrier to entry doesn’t need to be very high at all. So will I implement moderated commenting? Probably not. Why? I’m lazy. Twitter is a lot easier to manage than a comment engine. And I’ll wager that’s half the reason why comments are falling out of fashion.