This thing Joel Spolsky wrote about the negative value of comments, parsing something Dave Winer pontificated about (and as an aside, I wonder how many of the later generation of bloggers, say post 2003, have even heard of Winer), well, it’s got me thinking.
In essence, comments are generally a bit shit, especially comments on sites that get traffic. Joel cites this jawdropping thread on a real estate blog that descends into death threats and religious bigotry in moments just because a Jewish neighbourhood is mentioned.
Now, I like my comments but that’s because I know most of the people who comment here and, I think, that community rubs off on the people who I don’t necessarily know and they behave accordingly. Or something like that. But I still get the twats. Or to be more accurate, I still get people who behave like twats when they comment. Like Dr Kevin Law who yesterday left an arsey little comment on the Tintin thing I posted in July. Now I’m sure Dr Kevin is a lovely person, educated and erudite with the social skills and graces of a gentleman. But give him a comment box and, boom, he comes over like an arsehole who ignores the main point I was making in the post (that comics are an easy target for those who would censor) to bang on about an issue I’d dismissed as irrelevant (alleged political correctness in the funny farm).
I don’t want your comments, Dr Kevin. Not because I’m afraid of them or wish to censor you. I just find them boring and irrelevant to my carefully crafted blog post.
The simple answer is that Dr Kevin should start his own blog and write a post about how I’m a fool and an apologist for the Orwelian state, but I think that sort of example is too idealistic. There’s something quite liberating about being able to throw ill-thought out rantings onto the web without worrying about coherency. I’ve done it myself many a time (and occasionally regretted it, especially as you can’t edit your comments on another blog).
And then, whilst having a piss as it happens, I had an inspiring thought. The comments on digg are roundly considered to be pretty terrible. Not as bad as YouTube but still a pretty bad signal to noise ratio. But while they might not add much to the conversation they do serve a purpose. They let people throw their verbal shit on the walls and leave the original article alone. MetaFilter does the same sort of thing as do many other linklog-style community sites.
Currently those Share This buttons you see on certain blogs (Created in Birmingham has them at the end on every post – Stef’s idea and I saw no harm in it) list a bunch of social network services that pretty much do the same thing. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could link to themed comment services? I think this’ll be the next development in this area, if it isn’t happening already. We have themed forums and blogs – why not themed bookmark communities?
But all this does make me think about the value of comments to begin with. The fact is if you link to a post of mine I’ll find out about it pretty quickly even if you can’t send a trackback ping so if you’ve got something useful and interesting to say then you can post it to your own blog. If you can be bothered of course. And if you can’t be bothered, is that a loss? I’m not sure to be honest. Some of the best ideas seem throwaway to begin with.
In some ways I’m tempted to close comments on some posts as an experiment, replacing the form with an encouragement to blog about it elsewhere. But I also like the serendipity of comments and the community that builds up around them, not to mention the value.
I welcome your thoughts on your own blogs or in the comments. Or even in the pub.
I missed this when Joel published it so the via goes to Tom Coates.
I think the signal to noise ratio is directly linked to the number of people viewing your site. But that’s kind of obvious. Like you, I value the comments I get, but that’s because they are mostly all constructive or interesting.
Not sure about the ‘themed comment services’ though, how would they be controlled and, I’m guessing, some people would say that it’s introduces a layer of quasi-censorship perhaps? Comment prejudice maybe?
Not sure, but to those people who don’t have comments turned on then perhaps trackbacks should be encouraged to be the method of linking to ‘further discussions’?
Trackbacks are a bit hit and miss aren’t they, technically I mean.
As for Digg, etc I’ve always pretty much ignored the comments, as I don’t really see the need for ‘off-site’ comments, but on the odd occasions I do I’m reminded why I don’t (if you see what I mean).
I think of ‘themed’ bookmark communities – and they are kind of springing up (including upyerbrum.com and other pligg-based installations), but how much traction they’ll gain is – I suppose – down the the geekiness of each individual subject matter. Digg is primarily tech stories, and so has as a geeky following. Upyerbrum on the other had gets quite a lot of traffic, but very few comments – whether due to other things or the lack of geekiness in the users.
I read an interesting thing once about this, which theorised that it was much to do with the tone o the original blog – that even withing blogging empires like Gawker blogs like Idolator (which tends to be heavy of the sarcasm) has much nastier comments than, say, Lifehacker which is an overwhelmingly ‘nice’ blog. Digg and YouTube have no default ‘voice’ so they degenerate more quickly.
I haven’t made a point at all there have I? Which is probably why I felt comfortable commenting on your post, but not enough to write one of my own ;)
This isn’t specifically about the main part of your post but it’s more riffing on Dr Kevin Law’s comment and a thought I had the other day. Namely – you ought to be able to hold up some sort of yellow card or (in extreme cases) red card, when people wantonly go round hyping up arguments by calling each other fascists or nazis, or accusing people of censorship. I think I’d add ‘Orwellian’ too.
Having said that – presumably in some cases there would be good arguments to be made using these contentious words. Not sure how you get past that… a ‘get out of jail free’ card allowing you to use them but only sparingly? (I know that’s mixing up two very different sorts of games!)
I think Jenni is referring to Godwin’s Law
I was going to put ‘no comment’, but I’m not THAT much of a wise-ass.
Because I’m nowhere near as techno-sussed as you (see, I don’t even know the correct term for “knows a lot of stuff about computers and that”), I find comments invaluable as a way of seeing that people are actually reading my drivel from time to time. If I understood pinging and all that, they might be less relevant… but as I don’t…
Plus, there is a warm, cosy, social aspect to it too. And that’s coming from one of the world’s great misanthropes.
Calls to mind Godwin’s Law – basically if you compare someone to the Nazis you automatically lose the argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law
We could call it “Dr Kevin’s Law”. Invoke the PC Brigade and you have to sit in the naughty corner.