I have often wondered about why some blogs (and I wonder all the more about the more popular blogs) do not have a comments feature… Came across this post on ‘what makes a blog a blog’ on Naked Conversations.
If blogs are about open conversations, how can you turn off comments and claim its a blog?
I got there through a post on corporateblogging blog titled Conversation does NOT need comments – if blogging is all about conversations, then the answer is not ‘comments’ but hyperlinks – Links are the fundamental conversational tool.
For instance, I linked to these two posts – someone else reading this and having thoughts on this may blog about it and link back to this post (hopefully!) – and a conversation is created… this is the basis on which the ‘web’ works.
In fact, it often occurs to me that I have started thinking in hyperlinks
But is this truly conversation? It seems to me more like one of those plays where each character comes in and delivers his or her own lines (monologue?) and disappears – (in this case, attributing the lines to the original author – say Shakespeare! would be the equivalent of a link?) – or a ‘serial’ conversation between two people – from which something is carried on to another conversation where atleast one of these two people is present…
How can then these conversations be traced? And carried on?
I liken the ‘comments’ feature in a blog to a focus group discussion – why is that better than a personal interview – many-to-many as opposed to one-to-one? For one, a comment (either in a blog or in a group discussion) triggers off a response not just from the original questioner / blogger – but also from another person in the group – in other words, the flow is not at one level or uni-directional – that to me is conversation – a comment might even prompt a series of posts on other blogs – that is taking the conversation forward…
Without such conversations then, what makes a blog a blog – how is it different from a website ?
At the end of this rather long post, I am not saying comments and not links – I am saying links for sure – collaborative blogging wich creates conversations aross blogs and even countries sometimes – in fact, this is how social networking sites work…
But how complete is the conversation without the comments feature. I have non blogging friends who read my blog – and sometimes leave a comment. Or email me about it later. Why exclude them from conversations?
(As I wrote this, I was searching for Dina’s earlier posts on blogging as conversations – and as jazz… do read it)
Update
– Dina has picked up this thread and taken this conversation further here.
– Also do have a look at this on BlogTyme on more views on what maks a blog a blog – and not a website…. (for a really candid view of some of the ‘top blogs’, as Dina says)… also do definitely read the comments to the post!
– When I think about it, this whole thing is not about the failure of links as a conversational tool in blogging, but the inadequacy of existing trackback systems. If someone else has picked up a post from my blog and has carried it forward, often I do not know about it….
A typical example of conversation through hyperlinks is http://boingboing.net/ which doesnt allow direct commenting. Whereas for regular commenting like what I am doing in your blog, check out http://slashdot.org
Surprisingly I sub-consciously classify the former as blog and the latter as website. Is it bcoz of the style sheet? – need to think about it.
nice post Charu !!! am a huge fan of conversational blogging. and really find i am so let down when i read a post without comments. i keep feeling that Amit at India Uncut, and others who have disabled them (they have their reasons) have not really recognised the magic in conversations. Thats what makes blogging so unique… as opposed to online ‘publications’.
yes Dina, in fact, I have emailed Amit about this! (btw, I was thinking of you when I wrote this post -I expected you to respond immediately and you did :)) – a post without comments seems incomplete to me
Dheepak, I am surprised – I think slashdot does have a typical blog format – maybe becasue of the commenting feature? this is interesting – why this classification in your mind?
Shoot….you beat me to a blog on comments….I’ve been planning one for the past few days :-))))))))
But, excellent points here. I really like comments on blogs. It does a few things all at once: allows a reader to express a contradicting opinion (if there is one), creates a forum for healthy discussion and brings in new perspectives. I thought it was one of the best aspects of blogging.
I have continued the ‘conversation’ on my blog too.
Correct. Blogs need to have comments. Otherwise what is the difference between MSM and individual perspectives offered by us? I personally make it a point to reply to even Anon commenters, even if they cross the line a bit. And if it’s too abusive (without any real reply), I can simply delete them. Infact I must say that without comments, I wouldn’t love to blog at all. For reasons unknown, I have even earned some closet fans from Etherland.
Dheepak(that ‘h’?), me too read Slashdot for years(more for the comments, than for the techstuff 😉 and even today I still perceives it as a website-cum-discussionforum with sarcastic threads. Infact I feel there is as much culture to be learned on SD as tech. I guess it has something to do with the recent ‘arrival’ & usage of the term ‘blogs’. Slashdot has been for years. And methinks even the general look and feel of the site. Coz we have become so used to a particular style of comments box and styles. Guess that makes/breaks the definition in Slashdot’s case.
btw: I also return the next day(& the next day), like a tiger returns to its half-finished prey, to chk if there is a comment-reply to my comments & end up commenting on some new posts 🙂 (*charukesi, now u know what to do. chalo give me a smiley.*)
(*thinking aloud: why no ‘Preview’ button? kinda feels insecure before posting*).
🙂 Suhail
and didn’t I respond to your earlier comment? think I did – and I visited your blog too in return 🙂 – there, that is now two smiles
and I know what you mean – I keep returning to the blog where I have left a comment – disappointed where there is no response…
(yes preview – how do I do that now?_
Sunil thanks…. you can still continue the ‘converstion’ on your blog 🙂 – (I seem to be smiling rather a lot today)
Patrix, I saw your post – and I agree – is nice to leave a response to the comments on your blog – even if it is to say thanks – or that you agree…
Hi Charu. My, um, comment here: http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/2005/05/on-comments-and-blogs.html
While I agree that turning on comments to blog posts can add a lot of value to a blog, I seem to have an unique problem. I don’t see spam or abuse on my blog, so much as loosely relevant pleas for help, which unfortunately I’m unable to give, not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t.
See this post of mine, for instance – http://prayatna.typepad.com/education/2003/11/ugc_and_aicte_a.html- which began getting tons of comments. I started off trying to respond to every comment and then just gave up as it turned into a deluge. I tried explaining in the post that I couldn’t help, but that didn’t work – the comments continued to pour in. I then turned off comments for that post alone and that didn’t work either – the pleas just shifted to another post on my blog, no matter if the other post had any relevance to their plea or not. For good measure, some folks started posting their pleas in duplicate and triplicate, possibly to emphasise how important the matter was to them.
I still continue to get tons of comments everyday spread across many posts. This post from 2003 at
http://prayatna.typepad.com/education/2003/09/challenges_for_.html is one of the most popular posts. Look at the number of comments on this post.
I’ve now resigned myself to the fact that the S/N (signal to noise ratio) of comments on many posts can be so low that the signal is totally swamped out by noise for any reader of the post. I try my best to respond by mail to all signal comments, but sometimes end up missing a couple every now and then in the noise.
I asked myself if I should turn off the comments altogether, and decided to let things be as they are. If I turned them off, I’d lose even those few signal comments.
I suspect there may be a business opportunity lurking beneath this, given that the comments are not spam or abuse, but pleas for help.
yes, I’ve noticed people leaving strange requests on your education blog – esp. regarding gants and scholarships – often wondered what you do about this 🙂 – maybe you can start a career / education guidance centre or something!
personally, O had a problem with spam commetns more than abuse – but what the heck, it is worth it!