I just read Joel’s endorsement of the idea that comments on blogs are harmful to open discourse. I understand where he (and Dave Winer) are coming from, but it just isn’t true.
Here is how Joel sees comments:
When a blog allows comments right below the writer’s post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody … nobody … would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.
First of all, that is a ridiculously extreme analysis. Sure, there are real-world examples of that happening, but if you ask me, it is not due to the inherent worthlessness of blog comments, but rather it is due the the inability or unwillingness of the blog’s author to moderate the discussion that they are hosting.
Now, Joel doesn’t want to limit people’s ability to participate in the discussions:
The way to give people freedom of expression is to give them a quiet place to post their ideas. If other people disagree, they’re welcome to do so… on their own blogs, where they have to take ownership of their words.
Sure, everyone can blog. That doesn’t mean that every comment should be posted as a blog post. Sometimes comments are appropriate. What is troubling to me is that what Joel is proposing is that high-profile bloggers should get the benefit of more inbound-links, while still making it easy for them to ignore the people who are trying to have a conversation with them. What this would do is to simply give the greatest visibility to the most provocative bloggers while masking the dissenting views of those who disagree with them. Furthermore, allowing blog comments provides a centralized place for small discussions to take place. If trackbacks worked worth a damn then maybe I would be arguing the other side, but that is not the reality we live in.
There are times to post a comment and there are times to post a post on your own blog. I have a general set of rules that I use to determine which to use:
- Is it longer than one or two short paragraphs? If so, post it on my own blog.
- Do I want this as part of my personal historical archive that I use my blog for? If so, post it on my blog.
- Am I talking directly to the author of the post? If so, it is probably best as a comment.
- Will my comments be lost on my own blog? If so, it may be best as a comment. However, if 1 or 2 were true then I may post it on my blog and leave a comment pointing to my post (though this is incredibly rare).
- Am I willing to post this on my own blog? If not then I probably shouldn’t post it as a comment either. I often write comments on blogs, decide that I am either being mean or rash and decide against clicking the submit button. This usually (though not always) keeps me from participating in flame wars or hot topics.
I know that is not a perfect list, but it is the general guidelines that I use to determine if it is more appropriate to post a comment or a blog post in response to something I read elsewhere. In the case of this post, 1 and 2 were true so it was an easy decision.
You are always more than welcome to post comments here. If things get out of hand I have the capacity and willingness to moderate the discussion. Of course, my provocative posts are more likely to be ignored than to generate a flamewar, but that is fine by me.
This is turning into a big topic of conversation. It is now on the front page of Techmeme.
