I'm thinking of removing the comments feature for this blog. While I've enjoyed reader comments overall, I can't see that this experiment has led to anything community-building: people generally direct their comments toward me, but only rarely toward each other. I'm not blaming the commenters for this: not having been keen on hosting comments to begin with, I've done next to nothing to cultivate a commenter culture.
If you want, feel free to post your thoughts on whether comments should continue. Otherwise, I'm leaning toward going back to the old system: email. One advantage of emailed comments is that weasels like commenter "Brit Hume's Mom" are forced to approach me directly instead of hiding behind a tag. Enforced accountability.
Your thoughts?
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Thursday, July 20, 2006
mulling self-amputation
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8 comments:
Kevin,
It's your blog. You're the captain. King of your realm and all that. Personally, I enjoy reading the comments you get.
As Nomad says, it's you're call. I think one reason the comments don't flow is that there is no indication that there *are* any comments until you click on the link at the bottom, which also doesn't indicate it's a link for comments. It’s not intuitive. If you’re moving to WordPress and allow comments in that format, I’ll predict you’ll get more and varied responses.
Thanks, gents.
Yes, the comments feature was never intuitive, which was originally a function of the way comments (a Blogger doodad that showed up relatively late in the game) were integrated into my very old Blogger template.
Then I discovered that I liked the fact that people had to work to post and browse comments. See what I mean? I've never been into this stuff.
Anyway, as the night creeps on, I'm increasingly convinced that removing comments is the way to go.
Kevin
Another advantage to WP is that you see the IP of the person commenting. I'm not sure if Blogger does that or not. At any rate, you can send commenters to moderation by IP, or ban them completely. A great anti-troll measure.
personally I hope you keep the comments as I enjoy reading what other readers have to say. HOwever it is your space and your choice.
I guess I think it's a little odd to remove comments for what is not happening, although I also second what the two very fine bloggers ahead of me have written. The most important thing is that you are happy, both because that's an end in itself, and because your enjoyment inevitably rubs off on your readership.
You've got a fine blog that's brought me a lot of joy, Kevin, and I'll follow it regardless of whether comments are enabled or not.
Nathan,
Thanks. I don't think it's odd to end an experiment that seems to be going nowhere. In my case, I feel I've been enriched by readers' comments when they've arrived by email, and email strikes me as a perfectly fine way to comment. If people find email inconvenient, they probably weren't feeling much of an urge to say whatever they wanted to say.
I'll mull this over a bit more tonight, and make my decision tomorrow.
Kevin
Die comments! Die! Die!
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