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?
_
Thanks, gents.
ReplyDeleteYes, 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
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.
ReplyDeleteNathan,
ReplyDeleteThanks. 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!
ReplyDelete