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.

Twitter is more than just status updates

I am, what some may call, a Twitter evangelist. I preach the gospel of Twitter to everyone I meet. Most people look at me in confusion.

Today, my work has been made easier.

Thanks to the great folks at CommonCraft, I can now show people a simple video that explains Twitter in everyday English.

Once you’re done watching the video, go sign up for a Twitter account and then let me know so I can add you as a follower. Then, come back and read why Twitter is so much more than what you saw on the video.

Twitter is conversation, links, and ideas

Once you get used to the status update functionality of Twitter, the next logical step is discovering how the service is an excellent tool for asynchronous conversation. Like those in a chat room (from the old days of the internet), your conversations on Twitter are (usually) open to the public. This allows for fresh infusions of ideas and it also allows facilitates the discovery of new people to follow who have similar interests or stimulating ideas.

Conversation, undoubtedly, leads to ideas that reside outside the Twitter framework. This, in fact, is what I believe is the true power of Twitter: the ability to share links and ideas to people that want to engage with those same links and ideas.

Slowly, Twitter has been replacing my RSS reader as my main way of discovering good content. Essentially, following good people on Twitter lets me have access to personally-selected curators of the web, leading me to new places with every link they post.

What’s great about this targeted link-sharing is that the conversational aspect of Twitter comes back into play, allowing users to engage and interact with the links and content being shared.

Twitter is what you make it

I know people that are using Twitter for many other reasons than the ones I outlined above. In the end, Twitter isn’t just what you see in the video (though it’s definitely a great starting point) — instead, Twitter is anything you want to make of the most addictive asynchronous messaging platform to come about in years.

So go sign up and let me know so I can follow you.