Arguments for getting rid of comments
This is the first in a two-partner (here’s part II) inspired by the discussion Mark Bernstein provoked at Blogtalk Downunder about the value (or not) of comments. This installment puts forward the arguments for getting rid of comments entirely on your posts, so come along and add your own or tell me if I’m wrong in the (OK I get the irony) comments ;o).
(Tomorrow’s is going to be about why you should not just keep your comments but treasure and tend to them as you would a zen garden)
Argument number 1: The more comments you have the less links you’ll get – Comments lose you ranking
I’m quite serious about this. Do you really think that Dave Winer would get so many links if he allowed comments of his site? To take this down to a smaller (and perhaps more important) level, say there’s a writer who you’re really into who posts some really interesting material but doesn’t allow comments, if you want to respond then you’ve gotta do it on your blog, which gives you more links, a wider audience and…
Argument number 2: People write better shit on their blogs than they do in your comments – adding value
Blogs are all about ownership. How many times have you heard people bemoaning the lack of any sort of system which allows them to aggregate (and in that sense) own the comments they make on other blogs. We’re about as fond of putting in time, effort & consideration on other peoples blogs as we are of doing it in discussion forums (i.e. not very). If you scrap comments you will not just get yourself more links & a wider readership but you’ll also be helping others add more effectively to the conversation… you nice soul!
Argument number 3: You’ll look the opposite of a loser – pseudo a-listing yourself
Again, I’m quite serious here. The majority of blogs that don’t allow comments are ‘A’ listers. If you don’t allow comments you are genuinely giving out the impression that you have such a significant audience / group of people wanting to interact with you that you just don’t have the time for them or the stress that all that fame brings along. Plus (and this is a pretty big plus) you won’t have that big ol’ list of (0 comments) one the majority of your posts… not a good look!
Argument number 4: Welcome to a troll free world – better arguments
Seriously, no-one can really flame you out successfully if you don’t have comments running. Naturally they can go off to their own blogs and write about you ad infinitum, but what’s interesting here and what Clay Shirky has observed is that that’s unlikely to happen in anything but a good sense. Blogs just aren’t like mailing lists, discussion boards or comments features… flaming isn’t easy or comfortable… and if it does happen then it’s probably going to be with some consideration, depth and quality which in my book is as valuable as anything. If you can get yourself some real good blogging adversaries then you’re doing yourself (and your links / readership) a wonderful favor – and you won’t get it in comments.
Argument number 5: Spam, what spam – making your life easier
How many posts have you read and discussions have you had about comment spam. What’s the solution? Well, a spam free discussion medium of course. What? We already have one? Yes we do but we’re so obsessed by fighting off comment spam and figuring out how we can get track/pingback to work well that the obvious truth has eluded us for a while. Get rid of the comments, give yourself an easier life and enjoy blogging spam free.
- Posted on: May 30th, 2005
- 36 Comments
- Category: Archives
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I’ve found myself making this argument myself quite a bit lately. What’s nice is in a totally integrated blogging system (like an advanced MU) you could make leaving a comment and posting to your blog have a transparant interface.
I know exactly what you’re saying… one of the most interesting developments in, say, WPMU, might be the integration of the aggregation / ping facilities to reflect organisational & personal relatiuonships in that particular sphere (as well as retaining ownership)
Gotta disagree with you on this one…
1. This is the “if you intend to game Google for profit” clause. Yes, you get more links without comments, but allowing comments is the Right Thing To Do™ – if it loses google ranking, so be it – it’s better to have comments as part of the post.
2. If it’s just a comment I want to write, my motivation to create a new post on my blog just to do it asymptotically approaches zero. Don’t make me pollute the post flow on my blog in order to respond to something in yours.
3. A-Listers don’t allow comments because they are lazy. Moderating a whole bunch of comments takes time, and they don’t have it. It also sends a message that contributions are not welcome here – pfo and write your drivel elsewhere (or something like that)
4. Trolls are just part of the ecosystem. Any system with sufficient complexity has parasites. Gotta take the good with the bad, or take your ball and go home.
5. Spam? That’s mostly just bugs in MT that let it through. I haven’t had a single successful spam comment (or trackback) on my WordPress-powered blog since I switched. The solution is not to stifle discussion, but to use tools that do the job as advertised, without getting in the way.
Sure, you get some problems by having comments enabled. But, you’ll also get a much richer discussion than if you shut them down. I would be willing to bet cold hard cash that the vast majority of comments on my blog would not have happened if I’d have required them to post to their own blogs and trackback. And there have been some extremely valuable comments (to me, anyway) in there.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater…
Interesting comments D’Arcy. A similar angle to what’s coming out tomorrow … I think what Matt was alluding to and what I’m thinking about is next-generation commenting… an alternative owned, tracked and equally usable system.
Some of the more advanced WP blogs are going down that track a bit too with Avatars and all but don’t you think that your contribution here is worthy of a place in your archive (I do)
I’m not sure I want all of my blog comments stored in my own blog archive. I view them as peripheral to my blog. What I do is add bookmarks to del.icio.us – tagged with “blogcomment” – so I have easy access to any blog comments I care to track. I think that’s less intrusive (and likely less confusing) than posting to my own blog archive to comment on something in yours…
And it’s easier to have a conversation when all comments are in one place – it’s also less formal (and less formalized) meaning there’s less pressure to write well – you are free to just write. Not sure if I’m making any sense anymore…
Informally you’re doing OK ;o>
Agreed discussion needs to be centred on a particular object (in this case a post) but I thik that what you’re doing with del.icio.us is evidence enough that we need a better system non?
Yeah, but unless everyone is blogging in the One True Blogging System™ (whatever that may be), then we’re going to have to be using ad hoc decentralized strategies like the del.icio.us trick…
I guess the only other alternative I can think of is a new type of blog post that isn’t presented as its own entry on a person’s blog, but is just a link to a comment on another blog? dunno… have to think about this more…
I can’t help it I must join in
The issue is not with the idea it is with the tools we have available, we are being held hostage to a paradigm based on today’s tools. Innovation is needed here to resolve the issue, in the same way that tags are a solution to a problem but not the best solution.
Essentially I need to be able to aggregate all of the contact created by my current digital identity back into a central place, but also allowing aggregation back into the original narrative. I plan to formulate some more ideas on this and post back at my home site.
Oh please!:^) Isn’t the purpose of blogging (forget the commercial and ego oriented nonsense) inextricably linked to learning? Effective learning using technology is a combination of expression and evaluation (validation). True, the act of blogging promotes internal evaluation, but the richest learning comes from reflective and evaluative discourse with others.
I look forward to tomorrow……
Stephen… but do you learn more through considered expression which you own or off the cuff expression? And who said that posting wasn’t discourse, eh, eh ;o>
The comment discussion is completely absurd to me. What’s the problem with democracy? If you want comments, leave them open, if you don’t – easy! Don’t have them. Is it any more difficult than this?
Why should everybody behave the same? Who is writing the law here? Should I not have comments because who says so, exactly?Am I less of a blogger if I invite comments on my website?
This discussion will never go anywhere. It is essentially just another flamewar that sets people up against each other, wether this is done by comment, or posts.
Wait a minute… didn’t you just flame us by calling us flamers? ;o>
Have a read through the post and comments, no-one’s saying that you can’t use comments if you want to and vica verca, it’s just a discussion (and, I reckon personally a pretty valuable one) about teh merits or otherwise of them.
I didn’t call you flamers:-)
But this is the point – if nobody is saying that we’re not supposed to use comments or not – why are we having the discussion? What’s the goal? Where are we trying to get with this?
And why is this post titled:
“Arguments for getting rid of comments”?
There’s an argument for keeping them coming in tomorrow… my aim is to really tease out what are the benefits for having (or not having comments) and what might be round the corner in terms of communication.
Interesting that the exchange written in the comments here answers the question of your original post..
If you were a hip A list blogger that believed the discussion ought to take place away from your blog, you would have had comments shut off here, and denied the possibility of this back and forth communication.
I find it interesting that ther is a contunual yearning for a “right” answer (comments on vs comments off) when really either choice works well for many of us. The point is having tools that provide that as a choice rather than a handed down decree.
Personally, I despise and disrepect blogs without comment or any means of comments… or laden with noisy ads or pink in color or… we all have preferences, none of which ought to be imposed . If I have something subtantial and different to say, I might blog my own post about it, but if it is a little tidnot, it is a kudos I gived to take the time to comment. I get a juiced everytime I get a legit comment and most of the time, a link in the comment leads be to un discovered treasures.
You noticed that no. 5 was for you ;o>
But doesn’t pingback / trackback / avatar / all the funky WP stuff with comments hint at something else that might assist?
It’s kinda funny… It’s almost like we’re all awfully conservative about these tools which have been freely available / simple to use for, um, 4 years. By my reckoning it’s not on or off but rather what?
This is a discussion worth having…I’ll wait to see your comments tomorrow before entering the fray…
I think it was Einstein who said
“a problem cannot be solved by the mind set that created it”
granted the man spoke some shit but here i think he’s right
therefore i am going to just enjoy the medium until some 9 year old comes of age and figures it out for us.
I love my little soap-box and comments to me are essential for entering discourse..no comment, no discussion.
I reckon it’s going to be some 21 year old: http://photomatt.net/
Hi James
While Mark Bernstein was finishing his presentation I was on my blog turning off the comments – yep, no-one reads my blog, or, if they did, they (thankfully) didn’t leave comments. I thought Mark’s comments were just great and, being a newbie blogger, thought I ‘had’ to have hundreds of ’0 comments’.
My blog (http://marginalia.serendipia.net/) – now, this may surprise you, James, is a first, in that it is entirely self centred. Yep, my blog is about me, me, me. And so, other comments are not particularly welcome. People burning to contact me at the email address I check once every week or so.
On the off chance there’s some mad type of person who must leave a comment, I’ve decided to post an empty post once a month with comments open. Maybe every couple of months or so or something like that. It’s about me, me, me. You would tell me if I was self centred. I see this kind of a blog as a form of meditation – of conversation with me; and I have no desire to enter into dialogue with random strangers. It’s like finally sitting down to enjoy dinner and the doorbell rings – or the phone rings. Just no.
I’ve just started a more public blog (http://eatwellington.blogspot.com/) with space for comments. I’ll get back to you if it turns into being a good idea. I’m doubtful at the moment. Slightest blink and they’re gone.
Cheers,
Lynsey
But if we have a lot of old posts, with Word Press, we can’t override the comments being open easily. I recently even removed the comment template, and I occasionally still get comment spam. Not sure how that works, though.
Lauren-Noelle, there is a plugin to automatically close comments on old posts – I think it might be cryptically called “Auto Close Comments” or something.
But, if you’re closing old posts to commenting, you’re preventing the kind of activity that just happened on this post. You commented on an 8-month-old post, and I was able to comment in response to that…
I use a combination of Referrer Karma and Spam Karma 2 plugins, and spam is a total non issue – all posts remain open for comments forever.
Actually, I only did it because I moved the blog to another location. Thanks for that tip.
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