Comments on: The 1am essay: Comments – force for good or evil?

By: Pete Ashton

Pete Ashton — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:32:10 +0000

We could call it “Dr Kevin’s Law”. Invoke the PC Brigade and you have to sit in the naughty corner.

By: Nicky

Nicky — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:07:50 +0000

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

By: Rol

Rol — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:30:22 +0000

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.

By: ian

ian — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:57:21 +0000

I think Jenni is referring to Godwin’s Law

By: Jenni

Jenni — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:06:16 +0000

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!)

By: bounder

bounder — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:47:52 +0000

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 ;)

By: Gordon

Gordon — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 07:06:10 +0000

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’?