

No comment - jshakes
http://jshakespeare.com/no-comment

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john_b
Why not have the best of both worlds? If you really have something to say
that's important, lengthy, and worthy of the reflection of your readers, put
it in an "essays" section of your site where comments are disabled and link to
it in a blog post in the "blog" section, where comments are enabled. People
who are only interested in your thoughts will read the essay and then leave.
People who want to participate in the discussion can go to the blog post and
do so there.

The "comments are noise" attitude presumes most comments have nothing valuable
to add (which may be true to various degrees, depending on your readership).
But this is a judgment coming from the _author's_ perspective. The comments
may be noise to him or her, but might be very valuable to other readers. Even
if they seem to discuss tangential minutiae.

I agree with Joel. Before blogs emerged, there were plenty of websites where
people opined on various things without feedback from the readers. The
expectation that most people have when they go to a blog is that there will be
some level of interaction with the author and other readers.

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mbrock
A blog post is pretty much a sermon even if you have a little box where people
can leave "comments." That's part of why blogs are amazing. Sermons aren't
bad. People discuss sermons. Sermons don't happen in a vacuum, even if you
don't have the little comment box. People can discuss whereever they want.
Like here.

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onemorepassword
If discussions had to add significant value, the world would be a very quiet
place.

Noise can have social value. Half the comments on HN have little value on
their own, but they create a sense of community, a sense of place and
belonging. They're part of the identity of a platform. How many of us would
care much about HN if it was just links and anonymous votes? There wouldn't be
an "us" to begin with, and without an "us", who cares about HN?

~~~
beeneto
I don't think it's worth talking on a blog post or in a technical forum just
for social reasons (e.g. I don't think reddit's meme or pun threads would be
valuable on hn for their social effect), but I agree with you because I don't
think a comment has to add to The Sum Total of Human Knowledge™ for it to be
valuable. It just needs to be an interesting thought that the readers aren't
likely to have had on their own.

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bazzargh
Perhaps a different form of commenting is needed. Instead of showing all
comments to everyone, the article author sees all, while the commenter only
sees their own. Potentially, the article author could 'promote' worthwhile
comments, and allow full discussion threads - on a separate page.

The point of this would be to allow personal discussion with the author, but
spam and driveby comments would be discouraged.

I'm sure this must've been tried somewhere?

~~~
markkat
One big problem with comments is the isolation. If I leave a comment on a
blog, there's little chance that I will return to see responses to it, and I
even if I do, it isn't part of my online persona. There's a very asymmetrical
relationship between the author to his/her blog, and the commenter to his/her
comment. That's why comments don't often match the level that content does.

We are currently experimenting with a solution to this on Hubski. We are
allowing some blogs to mirror Hubski discussions of their content on their
blog. Here's an example:
[http://www.theadvancedapes.com/theratchet/2013/1/28/evolutio...](http://www.theadvancedapes.com/theratchet/2013/1/28/evolution-
of-suicide) I've long seen many bloggers append a post with "discussion on HN"
or "discussed on Reddit". We decided to skip the link, and to allow the thread
to be embedded. It's not so much a commenting platform as a mirror to the
Hubski discussion. So far it seems to be working well, and we have a cue of
blogs waiting to be added.

I should mention that users can follow or ignore users, tags, and domains on
Hubski, and what they see is a result of what they follow. I don't think this
would work on HN or Reddit, as no one would want every post from a given blog
to be submitted automatically.

~~~
khromov
This is very neat. Good job!

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beeneto
Comments sections improve blogs because they are a place where readers can
point out errors in the parent article.

Sending an email or tweeting the correction is more difficult than making an
anonymous comment, and would then need the author to both concede their
mistake and take the time to correct the article. Until they do that, everyone
who reads the article risks being misinformed.

I can see an argument that comment areas are less necessary on purely opinion
blog posts like this one, but on technical blogs they are much more useful,
and even on opinion posts I think giving space for dissent is probably a good
general rule to follow. For example James Shakespeare seems to base his
opinion on the belief that everyone has the same "blog reading algorithm",
which I don't think is the case. If there were a comments section I'd post
that suggestion, but because of the increased overhead/social investment
needed to send an email or tweet I'm not going to bother, and he will probably
never read that dissenting opinion.

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randallsquared
> It’s the equivalent of reaching the end of a book and having a mob of other
> readers immediately descend on you, everyone trying to make their review
> heard above the fray.

But when you reach the end of a book (and if you liked it), the first thing to
do is seek out others' opinions of and discussion of the book, right? It's the
same with TV shows; as soon as it's over (on a weekly schedule), people
naturally want to discuss it at twop or tvtropes' forum or whatever. Making
that discussion easy on your own site just streamlines the process.

~~~
smrq
It's still not exactly the same, though. I think the point the article makes
is that by appending comments to the end of an article, you take away some
important personal processing time. While you're navigating to tvtropes,
you're still thinking and forming opinions on what you just watched. The
streamlining takes away that pause and makes the discussion leak into the
original article.

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lubujackson
I do like the idea of the "discuss this post on Hacker News" links you see
sometimes. Because some articles are worth discussing, but usually not on some
random blog - the point is the audience wants to discuss the article with each
other. A blog's audience can be huge or tiny and there is no way to know if
the effort of posting a comment is going to be worth it unless you are quite
familiar with the blog already, and commenting on a remote site allows you to
much more effectively monitor responses and engage with a familiar audience.

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andyking
Comment sections on high-traffic news sites such as the BBC perplex me. I go
to the BBC to read the BBC news, not people's rants. The sheer volume of
comments (hundreds or even thousands) on popular articles there makes the
facility next to useless. It is the definition of "the drive-by argument!"

~~~
zimpenfish
On the plus side, when you're feeling a bit down in the dumps, you can read
those comment threads and say to yourself "at least I'm not a complete
blathering loon like this wackos".

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sksksk
I think that sites like Hacker News, Reddit and Facebook are much better for
promoting discussion of articles. A problem with comments on blogs is that
it's difficult to generate a community.

If you look on any large site that has comments (like The Verge, or YouTube)
the comments always descend into jokes and memes.

By posting this article on Hacker News, a discussion has formed and it follows
the rules laid out by the Hacker News community, there wont be much name
calling or inane jokes.

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kyllo
I never bother to read the comments when I read a blog. Don't care. I get to
have discussions here and on Facebook, etc. Blog comments sections are just
not used by enough total people (like HN), nor enough people that I actually
know (like FB), to be an interesting place to have a discussion, most of the
time.

And another side benefit of disabling comments is that it eliminates the need
to moderate and filter out botspam for fake Rolexes and herbal supplements for
"male enhancement."

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minimaxir
I strongly disagree, and honestly, I hate the trend of "blog comments are
evil!" that networks like Svbtle and Medium are perpetuating.

Yes, the comment systems of major blogs such as Engadget and TechCrunch are
filled with filth. (disclosure: I gained my fame/infamy through the TechCrunch
comments section). That's when the GIFT and Law of Large Numbers meet, and it
isn't pretty.

But _high quality content yields high quality content_. Articles that are
insightful, like analyses that hit the top of HN, don't attract stupidity.
Playing curation games with your comments (such as Gawker's "we hide all your
comments unless we like you.") alienate your users, and it is somewhat selfish
from the author's perspective.

A good compromise is Facebook Comments, which discourages trolls who aren't
willing to be anonymous. It doesn't eliminate them, but it's a very strong
start, and easy to implement.

~~~
nsmartt
I agreed with you until the last line. Weeding out intentionally bad
commentary must never be done at the cost of quality commentary.

~~~
minimaxir
For comment systems with both anonymous and non-anonymous commenting (Disqus,
LiveFyre), it's very rare (from my experience) that the valuable comments are
made by anonymous people.

~~~
nsmartt
Most people don't object to providing their identity, but those who do are
silenced if there is no anonymous option. It's not worth silencing them, IMO.

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vy8vWJlco
It's a little ironic that by not supporting comments/discussion on the page
directly they have been outsourced to HN. People will talk about you whether
you're in the room or not...

~~~
autotravis
I'm pretty sure the author would encourage this:

"Conversely, it’s not regressive to encourage people to take their thoughts
into the wider world instead of leaving them at the bottom of a webpage"

~~~
vy8vWJlco
Maybe a better word would be hypocritical, given that it looks like the author
submitted it to HN to ignite discussion. It makes me think of the Mango
character from SNL.

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jamesmiller5
At a hackathon I built a simple blog system that let one reply to the authors
article's individual paragraphs privately and provided a private RSS feed to
the commenter for the author to continue a conversation.

The idea being that an anonymous intelligent conversation is possible but the
author is probably the most _informed_ on a subject and therefore should be
the judge on what is considered good content.

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tfinch
Not sure I entirely agree with this for all cases. One example of a blog post
where comments are highly valuable is a highly technical/tutorial style post
(be it about coding, mathematics etc.)

Often with articles of this nature, the comments serve as a very swift
mechanism to get corrections and bug fixes back to the author - improving the
quality of the post for future readers.

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ciderpunx
Interesting. There is a particular art to fostering a culture of discussion,
but I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying that the signal got drowned out in
the noise in most comment threads. And some threads are more enlightening and
entertaining than the article above them. Depends on the comment thread.

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JulianMorrison
The blog is the comment.

You want to comment on the comment? Do it on your blog.

Not notable enough, nobody will see it? My heart bleeds for you.

Tumblr gets this right.

~~~
nsmartt
Visibility is low for actual replies on Tumblr. It doesn't properly facilitate
discussion. I can quickly discern that there are 4k+ notes on a post, but I
have no indication of how many are reblogs vs licks, let alone reblogs with
actual responses.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Yeah, likes were a mistake. But replying on your own blog is not a mistake.

~~~
nsmartt
Most reblogs are blank. I agree that replying on your own blog isn't a
mistake. I'd just amend that Tumblr _almost_ gets it right.

~~~
JulianMorrison
They aren't blank, they're forwarded to your followers. The design results in
chasing links of reblogs from posts and following the people who reblogged to
establish followed/follower networks that share values and talk a common
language. This is why tumblr is famous for having intense politics.

I consider the combination of "reblog" and "follow" to be a major design win.

~~~
nsmartt
> _They aren't blank, they're forwarded to your followers._

I meant that there's no easy way to determine which reblogs have actual
responses and which are just raw reblogs. The concept of a reblog is great,
but the execution isn't.

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nagisa
Exactly what I did with my own blog. My reasons are more technical though and
I still suggest user he can mail me if he want to discuss anything.

~~~
autotravis
And, if the reader's email correspondance is especially fruitful, you can even
update your blog post with his/her thoughts and your new ones.

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GhotiFish
For all the talk about the design and user behaviors. The author uses some
kind of pseudo-highlighting to indicate links. I would not of figured that out
if the highlighting pattern didn't match that Wikipedia style so often used.

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ofacup
preachy articules add no value. comments add a lot to a whole lot of articles,
just not preachy ones

~~~
mwfunk
Ah, the irony. :)

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OGC
tldr: author is too lazy to moderate comments

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onion2k


