Parked.

The new Metronauts blog is live, and last week, I added a post about commuter parking lots and why a lack of parking is causing more congestion in the core:

The problem of inadequate commuter parking doesn’t seem like a pressing concern until you realize that it directly correlates to congestion issues in the Toronto core. With fewer options to park at transit hubs, more people are forced to drive into the core for work.

Instead of encouraging drivers from across the GTA to leave their cars at GO Transit and TTC stations, we are in fact penalizing them from doing so (unless they arrive earlier and earlier or are willing to bear exorbitant costs) and incentivizing driving into Toronto over taking transit.

You can read the rest of the post here. If you’re interested in transportation issues in the Greater Toronto Area and not already subscribed to the Metronauts blog, I’d go over there and check it out — and even better, become a contributor!

Discuss.

So after some waffling and some soul-searching, I’ve decided that allowing comments on this blog is a good idea. I’m going to keep them open from now on.

That was the easy decision. Now I’m contemplating using a service like Disqus to power the comments here on this site.

The new update to Disqus allows two-way integration into Wordpress with a simple plugin, and gives more power to both readers and blog adminstrators to manage their comments.

I’ve heard good things about Disqus before, but I’ve been wary of moving to a service where I didn’t have full control over the comments that were posted to my blog. Now that Disqus allows seamless integration, it’s looking more and more appealing.

So what do you think?

Should I be using a system like Disqus? Would that bring more benefits to you, my readers? After all, in the end, it’s all about what works best for you.

Discuss.

Where’s Vasta?

Missed me?

There’s a reason I haven’t been blogging for over a week: I’m going through a slump.

Before you go out and tell me that slumps are reserved for professional sports players and bloggers are immune to the vagaries of hot and cool spells, let me assure you that blogging is, indeed, a very streaky endeavor.

I need to bust this slump. Other than sharing a golden thong or playing with blowup dolls, I’m not quite sure what people to do help them break out of slumps.

How do I get my blogging swing back? What do you do when you’re going through a bit of a slump, on your blog or elsewhere?

Any tips you may be able to provide will be greatly appreciated. In the meantime, I’m going to go down a can of SlumpBuster Energy Drink and then go and order me a case of BrainToniq.

(Aside: Why does nobody carry BrainToniq in Ontario? I’d be their best customer!)

Rethinking the blog comment policy

Ever read something on this site and feel like you need to respond? Apparently, you’re not the only one.

In the past two weeks, I have received at least ten emails or Twitter messages asking me why I have disabled comments on Eloquation; most of them requested that I open up comments and allow the conversation to grow around my writing.

I’m thinking about it. But before I do, some context…

Learning from history

I disabled the ability comment on individual posts on Eloquation just over a year ago. (I have, however, always allowed people to leave trackbacks or pingbacks to any post on the site.) There were three core reasons behind my decision at that point:

1. My blog was a personal publishing platform: While many argue that the blog is a space for conversation on the web, my primary goal in creating Eloquation (or Wholesome Goodness or On A Day Like Today, the iterations that came before this one) was to have place to publish my thoughts and my writing on the web. I was using other spaces on the internet to initiate conversation and discussion.
2. People had other places to respond: I’ve always been a big fan of the concept of trackbacks. Creating a cross-linked compendium of related ideas (rather than collapsing ideas in one comment thread) across the web feels like a much richer way to create conversation to me. In the past little while, I’ve experimented with adding Technorati links or Twitter replies to my posts as well, to show how conversation happens outside the blog.
3. Nobody was leaving comments: There’s only so many “Comments (0)” you can see on a page. Of course, I knew that this is largely my own fault: if the content I create isn’t engaging enough to incite conversation, then I shouldn’t be expecting many replies. That being said, the content was personally important enough for me to publish it, so the compromise was to remove the option for commenting altogether.

That’s some context as to why the comments disappeared. But should they come back?

Learning from others

I’m not the first to have this internal debate over the validity of comments on a blog. There’s a multitude of opinions on both sides of the fence.

Dave Winer most famously said:

In fact, to the extent that comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual, comments may act to make something not a blog.

Echoing those thoughts, Joel Spolsky has said:

You don’t have a right to post your thoughts at the bottom of someone else’s thoughts. That’s not freedom of expression, that’s an infringement on their freedom of expression.

Russell Beattie agrees with my thoughts on disparate conversations:

What these people don’t get is that I wrote a post on my weblog, they read it and responded on their weblog, and now I’m responding to them again here. That’s a conversation - no comments needed.

Of course, people like Jeff Atwood vehemently argue for the other side:

If readers want to have a public dialog with you, then your readers must have blogs of their own. This strikes me as awfully elitist. […] Are you really comfortable saying, in effect, unless you have a blog I am not interested in what you have to say?

Mathew Ingram, of course, sums up the other side’s argument well:

What makes most blogs interesting isn’t so much the great things that the writer puts on there (as much as I like to hear the sound of my own voice), but what kind of response it gets, and how that develops, and who carries it on elsewhere on their own blog.

Needless to say, there really hasn’t been any real consensus as to necessity of having comments on a blog yet. And that’s why I need your help.

Learning from you

What do you think? Do you think I should bring comments back on Eloquation? Should I open up comments on all posts, or just selected content? Should I keep allowing trackbacks?

I’m opening up comments on this post to see if any of you have some thoughts about the topic. Feel free to contact me through Twitter, email, SMS, or trackback if you feel so inclined.