If you skim read this and intend to leave a comment, bear in mind I’m not talking about you. Probably.
I’ve been checking out the Guardian’s new Comment is Free blog-portal-thing and generally speaking I’m impressed. While it’s good to see the traditional Comment sections of paper reproduced as blog content it’s also nice to see the regular contributors to the paper writing in what I suppose we could call a “blogging voice”, slightly more informal and off the cuff.
The name of the blog comes from a quote by C. P. Scott, editor of the paper from 1872 to 1929. “Comment is free but facts are sacred”, which is a nice piece of brain food if ever there was one and quite pertinant to our modern era of blogging.
In newspapers “Comment” is an important area of the publication, putting the day’s news into context and laying out the paper’s point of view. In blogging, however, comments are what follow on from the main content, are open to pretty much everyone don’t represent the blogger’s opinions. If you like, Blogging is giving a speech or telling a story and comments are opening things up to the floor afterwards.
There’s a reason why most blogs with large readerships turn off comments. People who comment on widely read blogs are inherently fucking stupid jerks who should be shot. On smaller blogs this is not such a problem as they’ll invariably have some kind of relationship with the blogger, even if it’s as tenuous as having followed a link from another blog, but even here it can go wrong. I find myself doing it – skim reading a blog post and coming up with some stupid opinion about it which, when I go back and re-read the thing I’m supposed to be responding to, turns out to be completely irrelevant. This is the main reason I very rarely leave comments.
Comment is Free has comments enabled and will eventually expand to allow commenting on every relevant article in the paper. This is a brave and noble experiment but, by the gods, have you ever read through a popular comment thread on their blogs?
One of the most mind-warping things is that some commenters think they have rights. As someone’s who’s managed a comment-enabled blog for a few years, even at my meagre level, this is a patently absurd idea. Rights? Ha! You’re a guest in my house. Certainly, I invite you in and welcome your company, but if you start pissing up the walls and pouring tea on my cat then you’re out, matey. One of the amusing aspects of that time the band I slagged off found the post was the fact that none of them realised I could delete their rantings and close down the comments. That I left them there meant I felt I’d won. This blog is not the public sphere. It’s mine. I control it in every way. You have no rights.
Over on the Guardian blogs (and countless other places like it) I wonder, do those muppets who rant and rave really think that their comments really hold any weight? Why on earth do they do it?
I don’t think enabling comments is a bad thing, per se. I have them here and enjoy the conversations that happen, because they are conversations between myself and a manageable number of people who come here often. This is a good thing and I’m dead chuffed I’ve been able to nurture it over the years. It’s like you’ve come over and we’re having a nice chat in the kitchen.
Comments on the big sites, though, is like someone talking from a balcony and asking for feedback from a crowd of thousands. If there is anyone out there with something pertinent to say they’re going to be drowned out. It’s probably the potential audience that makes them do it. Sure, they can go to Blogger and respond to the articles on their own blog but no-one will read them, at least not at first. If you’re writing about current events building up an audience is fucking hard so it’s easier to try your luck in the comment sections along with everyone else. But the nature of people who can’t be arsed to do things the hard way or accept that their opinions are nothing new is they very rarely write anything of worth.
There are many lessons here, I think. One of them is that a large audience isn’t conducive to a conversation. It’s actually the antithesis of a conversation, and blogs, the majority of blogs, are a form of conversation. You can’t have a conversation with a major national newspaper.
Just to reiterate, I like Comment is Free a lot. It looks like becoming one of the few sites I’ll bookmark and dip into for a bite of thought and opinion. But the comments? Yeurch!
Its a slightly different situation because the blog at the time was inviting feedback, but in response to ‘You can’t have a conversation with a major national newspaper’, I feel I should remind you of the Doonesbury conversation and that they definitely did listen, at the time, to blog comments, even going as far to apologise in the thread.
Although, they do seem to have agreed with you about deleting comments they don’t like – the original Doonesbury comments seem to have vanished !
Fair point, but I think things like Doonesbury are an exception, though I’m not exactly sure why…
My issue is more with the sorts of people who leave comments on newspaper sites. If they’d all just fuck off then maybe we could have a conversation with a newspaper, but I think the size of the audience increases the wanker threshold.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with the balcony metaphor. I’ve commented on the Guardian site a few times over the past six months or so, but usually only on the ‘quieter’ posts. One thing that a LOT of people have still to learn is WHEN to comment and when to take your opinion to your own site.
But of course, as commenting becomes more popular, then number of idiots will rise … bit like life really.
I think its an exception because at the time, they were actively seeking feedback and they got so many responses saying the same thing that they had to listen.
Comment is Free, on the other hand – if you’ve got something relevant to say in response to Polly Toynbee, you’ll send it to the letters editor, surely ?
CRAPITA CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY …
Hi.
This may be a new thread, is truncated and not yet ready for publication.
We must remember these are the folks in the bidding to create the BIO-METRIC ID card, that WILL evolve into a bio-chip implanted in everyone to buy or sell anything (I.E – EXIST) unless the People say, “NO!”
HE RHH
PS. The County Court judge, that let them off, prevaricated for ages on ‘signing off’ his ludicrous ‘summing up’. This action came
down from the High Court. Thay and I are after them all … and they know it.
******************************************
AN EXPOSÉ / REPORT FROM:
HE Robert.Hertner@hotmail.com , ©, 2006, all rights reserved.
Chair: Holmefield House Resident’s Assn. – et al.
http://money.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1576844,00.html
http://money.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1663603,00.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/04/15/dt1507.xml
OR- Google “Robert Hertner”
To report your TVL horror story, contact: tvlvictims@hotmail.com
CAPITA GROUP (OR THE COMPANY)
HAS INFECTED AND/OR CORRUPTED:
* HM’s Houses of Parliament (Cash loans to Labour for Peerages).
* The Stock Exchange / Financial Services Authority / UKListings ltd.
* HM’s Customs and Excise.
* HM’s Magistrate’s Courts.
* Various Councils (Community Charge) / Local governments (C0Ngestion Charge).
* THE privatised BBC.
****************************************
* THE BBC.
In the late 1990s, during the mergers, acquisitions and asset stripping frenzy / bubble – the secretly privatised BBC assets were sold off by Mr. Birt without putting them to public tender, and the proceeds were not paid into HM’s Treasury.
Said BBC former: assets, infrastructure, archives and such – are now owned by:
Sony,
Bertelsmann,
Siemens,
Castle Communications,
Home Choice [Intellectual Property],
BT/NTL [transmission facilities],
Trillian,
Macquarie Bank [recently bought 75% of BBC Digital] and/or-
Other very lucky [insider / sweet-heart deals] companies.
Mr. Birt privatised the BBC. He was made Lord Birt to get him out of the BBC. His BBC Board of Governors were all sacked in April 2005 (ostensibly over the Gilligan/Kelly affair, but in reality) over their connections to the companies that bought the BBC’s assets, which are being leased-back to the BBC to stay on air – using the £3 BNs per year inequitable TV Tax to do it.
Insofar as £130 per year is required for each ‘license-able’ dwelling / ‘premises’, that is a lot of money to a single mother with only one TV, but nothing to the wealthy with many television sets under one roof.
The BBC granted Capita Ltd a contradictory / nonsensical “Form of Authority” role for enforcement and collection the TV License fee/tax. Accordingly, TVLicensing / Capita’s commercial agents believe they have carte blanche to:
* assault people,
* trespass and aggravate that trespass on private or inside communal secured property, to -
* intimidate and threaten people –
* attempt to extort money for TV Licenses, plus-
* sell said TV Licenses for “cash, cheque or money order”
ON SITE – at will. Evidence ATTACHED.
They are proven criminals – trained by TVL to break the law to enforce a bogus tax that contravenes European law regarding the Free Flow of Information.
They case-build and launch court actions – preying on the ill-informed, vulnerable and weak – using a data-base system known as MAIGIS
( http://maigis.wmpho.org.uk ) to target areas with high:
poverty,
crime,
divorce / single parents, and-
disease –
i.e. society’s most vulnerable and defenceless people.
The very notion that the once proud and noble BBC has sunk to such depths is unbelievable – though generally in denial of it. But the sad truth is, the “BBC Trust” that “the People Own” is little more than the branded name “BBC”, with virtually no assets left – real, intellectual, moral or otherwise. It is a doubly-cruel irony, insofar said “BBC’s trust” is non-existent in every sense.
When Mr. Dyke joined the BBC, he said of the BBC TV Tax he loathed, “There is no other way.” Now we know exactly what he meant, and now that he’s out of it, ‘In the real world, the BBC must either sink or swim on its own merits.’
BBC News 24 is a very expensive joke – and a boring failure. BBCDigital – that no one wants, nor asked for, that few care to watch, with diabolical reception – will be worse insofar as the existing terrestrial channels are already flooded with cheap foreign imports – and the frequencies are to be sold off, that may well retain the very audience the BBC desperately needs.
Moreover, unless they pay people to get the digital boxes, no one will bother because the internet is better … and getting ‘wireless’ fast.
Turning a blind eye to commercial bullying by crypto-fascist thugs in crypto-fascist courts – to collect the BBC’s TV Tax by force; rather proves how pathetic, desperate, hopelessly lost and morally bankrupt the ‘new’ BBC has become.
Some folk cannot grasp why more and more nations around the globe have banned the BBC from broadcasting whatever they want inside their countries. The answer is painfully obvious. Sadly – the BBC, in league with Capita Ltd, has become the very beast it rallied the nation against in W.W. II. Neutral AND independent? For a terrified lapdog on one hand, and an addicted spendthrift on the other – hardly.
The BBC, TVL/Capita and the Magistrate courts frauds may well get their, extraordinary, 10-year extension – and cash cow. But it will, alas, be a pyrrhic victory – that will not and cannot rescue the BBC dinosaur from its own self-imposed sold-out debt-slaver and waste, overtaken by technology beyond its control … and Capita’s ilk.
Just another ten years of Sisyphus ceaselessly rolling that useless rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone will fall back of its own weight. R.I.P.
INDEED, CAPITA GROUP (OR THE COMPANY) HAVE MUCH MORE TO ANSWER FOR …
“Certainly, I invite you in and welcome your company, but if you start pissing up the walls and pouring tea on my cat then you’re out, matey.”
ROFL :)
I like the BBC.
I am pretty sure you won’t have come across any of my CiF comments, but it is nonetheless a possibility, so I had to read as though it were about me… and yeah, I’m a whatever it was.
Blogs are a tricky medium in relation to discussion. The blogger is in the position of delivering the sermon/speech/lecture, and the audience gets to make a few comments afterward. While it’s technically possible to write a long, substantive comment, the likelihood of it being read and discussed at length is… zero. The alternative is to have a dialogue between blogs, or to have a group blog. This works, and in some cases, is both informative and lively.
Comment is Free is somewhere in the range of a blog with a bit more discussion. The Open Democracy website has some of the same qualities. Both are good places to go if you want debate that consist of more than sniping a la Grauniad Talk.