
Proposal: A new kind of blog comment system - brilliant
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/22/proposalANewKindOfBlogComm.html
======
WiseWeasel
Meh, 24 hours is too long to wait. By that time, I likely no longer care to
read any comments on the subject, so they all go unread. I mean who is going
to return to a blog post a day later just so they can read comments? Might as
well just leave the comments off. Let's face it, the author is still working
through his trauma from a time when he apparently left comments unmoderated
and unrestricted and got burned, and this is his therapy. He's making his way
back into the social, but he's taking baby steps.

Also, when you're boasting of feats like inventing blog comments, you might be
slightly more prone to being trolled than your average blogger.

~~~
NathanKP
I feel that comments on blogs themselves are slowly being replaced by comments
on sites such as HN, Reddit, etc. I notice again and again, at least with
personal blogs, that a post with 90 comments on HN will only have two or three
comments on the post on the original site. Additionally the posts on HN are
more likely to be negative than the posts on the original site.

Perhaps it is because people feel less inhibited when they are posting their
thoughts in another neutral space. If the author of the article doesn't want
to be trolled or flamed on his own site then why not just link to the HN
discussion, as I have seen other bloggers do?

If your post is controversial or interesting people will discuss it, and you
can do nothing to stop it, because closing comments on the main site will just
cause people to discuss it on another site, as this HN post is proving.

~~~
Ardit20
"Additionally the posts on HN are more likely to be negative"

What exactly do you mean? That people do not comment on here, ohh this is
brilliant, we love you, you're our god, even if the guy said something obvious
or something which isn't brilliant at all, or do you mean that here people
write down their thoughts as they are not biased. I do not see why the latter
would necessarily mean negative however? There are criticisms, but are
reasonable criticisms something negative?

I think posts here are positive, even for the owner of the site, unless he
takes it personally. You know, its just business :P

~~~
NathanKP
I am just referring to a general trend that I have noticed in submitted
articles, after comparing HN comments with on-site comments for the past year
or so.

On HN you are more likely to see nitpicks or deconstructions of the article,
even criticisms of the person who wrote the article. Also the best way to get
upvotes is often to criticize the article submitted and point out a flaw.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing... I'm just sharing my observations.

~~~
_delirium
That makes some sense to me, and I think I'm somewhat more negative on 3rd-
party comment sites than on bloggers' own sites as well. On a blogger's site,
it feels like I'm writing a reply _to the blogger_ , which I make more effort
to try to keep constructive, soften negative points, make sure to balance them
with positive ones, etc. On a 3rd-party site it feels like I'm writing a
comment for the site's own community, not really directed at the author, who
often isn't present (e.g. I doubt NYTimes journalists are here reading our
comments on their articles).

The fact that they are sometimes present makes that a little tricky, and maybe
requires recalibration. Traditionally, I was able to assume that an author of
an external blog post _wasn't_ part of the community, because if they were,
they would've just posted their post in the community instead. For example, in
the heydey of Kuro5hin, if you were part of the community, you most often
subumitted your articles to K5. If something was linked externally instead of
published on K5, you could assume it probably wasn't by a community member.
Same on Usenet--- if you were writing an article as part of a community, you
posted it _to_ the community. And I think it does make sense for discussions
to have a different tone when the author is present and engaging versus when
they aren't.

It's a separate (though related) issue, but I think there are real advantages
to that kind of community-centric site, where the discussion _and the
articles_ make up the community, instead of the HN-style collection of on-site
discussion and off-site blog posts, some of which are by community members and
some of which aren't (with no easy way of distinguishing, unless you remember
which URLs are blogs of HN members).

------
_delirium
> "If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post
> your rebuttal there."

This is actually the common mode of conversation in one area of the academic
blogosphere I follow, and it's _annoying as hell_. I would definitely not want
it to become a common model.

Instead of centralizing a discussion in comments somewhere, I have to follow a
web of "Just writing a quick note in reply to Michael here" and trackbacks and
whatnot amongst 5-8 blogs that usually participate in the conversation. If
you're not following it in real-time, it's especially annoying to try to
reconstruct the conversation, versus if it were in one blog's comments, or a
web forum somewhere, or on a mailing list, or anything else other than 5-8
people with separate blogs replying to each other on their own blogs. In this
case, though, it's less due to blog authors not wanting comments (most have
them on), and more due to the repliers always thinking their reply is so
important that it has to be kicked up to a reply-post, rather than living as a
mere blog comment.

I do like the "blogs are publishing" analogy he uses, but for negative
reasons: instead of people conversing directly, this model of "reply on your
own blog" results in the equivalent of everyone printing up broadsides or
pamphlets with their ideas. So you print your pamphlet, and if someone
disagrees, they print their own, and instead of 5 people discussing things,
you have 5 pamphleteers scattering their dueling pamphlets around town.

Nonetheless, the old model of publishing documents on the web seems fine, but
I don't see why it should be in blog format then. If you have a document
that's worth "publishing", imo it should usually be of somewhat lasting
interest, and you should pick a format other than reverse-chronological-order
to organize your published documents (though it's fine to have a "recent
documents" list to direct frequent readers to what's new).

~~~
blasdel
The "blog post as direct response" model works _really_ well on Tumblr.

Everywhere else it only works at the extreme ends — for total takedowns like
the recent Kurzweil/Myers dustup and friendly 'Sue's post on x inspired me to
post this on y', but not anything in between. Trackbacks were the worst thing
to come out of SixApart, and those guys were chock full of bad ideas.
Basically tailor-made for spam.

------
icarus_drowning
Quote: "I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I
think they're publications. And I think the role of comments is to add value
to the posts. If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog
and post your rebuttal there."

Something about this rubs me the wrong way-- probably the fact that it assumes
that rebutting a post doesn't add any value. If I (or Dave Winer) post about
something and completely mischaracterize what it is, how it functions, what it
means, etc., a comment that rebuts that mistake is certainly quite valuable.
It gives the author a chance to revise or reconsider his opinion or take on
the matter.

A blog post disagreeing with a high-profile author like Dave Winer is unlikely
to have the same kind of impact, especially when it comes from a low-profile
site (which, let's face it, most blogs are). It is far too easy for an author
to ignore dissenting posts at other sites than it is a highly-visible comment
that appears directly under the post in question.

IMHO, Dave Winer is a particularly bad comment moderator-- he routinely
removes comments that disagree with his opinions simply because of that
disagreement. Anecdotally, I no longer comment at Scripting News precisely
because he banned my OpenID from the site when I disagreed with one of his
more volatile political posts. Not particularly strong evidence, I know, but
it is a routine event at SN to see Winer completely shut down or remove posts
that differ with his opinions.

Now, as Winer is fond of saying, those dissenters are certainly capable of
starting a free blog an any number of free services (or going so far as to
transform an old PC into a Wordpress site of their very own), but, as I've
mentioned before, this certainly doesn't merit the same level of visibility
that posting a comment does.

All of which is to say: I read the above and don't necessarily see Winer
trying to "improve" his site. I see him trying to justify marginalizing those
who disagree with him.

------
ryanelkins
To me this is a very old school, closed off way of looking at things. Who are
the comments for? Just the author? If so, why make them public at all? If they
are for the readers, how many readers are going to come back 24 hours later to
check out the comments?

The idea that if you disagree or have a lot to say you should create your own
blog post is also a bit ridiculous. Is it OK in that case to leave a comment
saying "I have responded to this on my blog here at xxxxxxx"? I mean, how is
the context between the original post and the followup to be maintained or
even seen by the original readers?

This just seems to be more of a throwback to old school print where the
interconnectedness of ideas was severely limited. Unless you were aware of and
read all publications on a subject you were likely to see the entire
"conversation" on a subject.

I guess if you want to see a blog article as a publication that's your
prerogative, but there is a reason print media is dieing out. We should be
trying to increase the interconnectedness of ideas, not stifle it.

~~~
randallsquared
_The idea that if you disagree or have a lot to say you should create your own
blog post is also a bit ridiculous._

Indeed. If you want interesting conversations about your blog posts, have
commenting (threaded is better; saves a lot of time). If you don't, just don't
have them.

~~~
hibrian
from tfa: "I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't.
I think they're publications."

It's not about interesting conversations.

It's about on-topic replies to the author's post. IE people being able to read
and comprehend a post before making a comment on it.

~~~
randallsquared
I also view blog posts much like publications, but the comments on a blog post
are not part of the publication. Or, they don't have to be.

It's not clear to me what metric is being sought, if it's not interestingness.

------
jacquesm
Don't bother blogging about it, do it, test it for a month or more, _then_
blog about the results.

~~~
kmfrk
Maybe he is a afraid that people miss the 24-hour window if he doesn't give a
heads-up (nyuk, nyuk).

(I agree that this an idea doomed to failure.)

------
luu
_I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think
they're publications._

Why does there have to be a strict dichotomy between these two things? It's
not uncommon to see conversations happen (very slowly) through traditional
publications and everything posted online is, in a sense, published.

------
InfinityX0
My first thought when reading this is that this evolves into a "battle rap"
scenario where bloggers rebut one another via their medium, blog posts (rap
songs), rather than just talking directly in the comments. I think that got
2pac and Notorious B.I.G. shot.

I think blogs can at once be a publishing medium and also a host for
conversation - and why they can't crosspolinate seems ridiculous to me. Winer
seems a bit too obsessive-compulsive about his comment system - just let it be
what it is, a place for conversation. That, or close it. He cares and talks
wayyy too much about it - it's not that serious.

Maybe there are some deep-rooted self esteem issues under there somewhere?

------
deno
That's just tuning parameters, there's nothing groundbreaking there. The title
should be something more like:

Proposal: Sane defaults for blog commenting system

Still, commenting (if at all) should be very specific to character of the site
commented upon. Like, for example, do you enable replying and threading?
That's something that's very dependant on community dynamic.

Personally I think you should leave commenting and discussion for more ‘local’
communities — like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. Internet's just too big to
aggregate all people's opinions on your site. And you can gain some more
visiblity that way, too.

------
nphase
Or just turn off comments altogether and let people comment on HN (et al).
This happens inevitably, right? Many times the comment thread for an article
is actually longer and more rich here than on the source website itself.

~~~
silentbicycle
That, too, has its downsides. Raganwald has a lucid post about it here:
[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/thanks-for-submitting-
my...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/07/thanks-for-submitting-my-post-
to.html)

~~~
dagw
If bloggers want the discussion to happen on their blogs and not on HN or
reddit, then they really need to offer something better than HN or reddit.
Hell if you can't even do threaded comments or something similar to make it
easier to follow the flow of discussion, it is obvious to me that you don't
care too much about getting comments.

------
lukasb
"If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post your
rebuttal there."

Did he just ask commenters not to disagree with him?

------
Hagelin
I really like Andrew Sullivan’s simple system, soliciting readers to comment
via email and then selectively publishing those he believes create and add to
an ongoing conversation.

<http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com>

~~~
mooism2
Not only that, he also links to posts on other blogs that talk about an issue,
putting them in context with each other.

------
AmitinLA
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution has an interesting real-world analogue when
he has to deal with q&a during his public speaking event. He believes that
people are behaving in status-seeking ways and so forces people who want to
ask questions to write them down and pass them up where he answers them
anonymously[1]. Winer's 24-hour limit seems to be partially addressing this
problem as well, but I agree with the comments already posted about that being
too much time to care.

One possible solution I'm thinking about implementing in a new blog I'm
starting is a separate Twitter comments account. This forces brevity and
accountability among other things, and people could link to their own posts or
places where my posts are (hopefully) being discussed. In addition, if the
blog is successful, I could potentially see what comments are being retweeted,
etc. and run some quick and dirty analytics to help determine high-value
comments. Additional benefits would be connecting with high-value readers in a
more intimate way that could improve dialogue as well as gently guide users to
providing comments via email for longer dialogues. I'm concerned that 140
characters is too short to provide feedback, though the majority of comments I
post on non-conversational sites seem to fit into that range.

Any thoughts?

[1] Sorry, I can't find a link to the article so I'm paraphrasing heavily.

------
paul9290
Why not grab the users Mac address and IP and award them a badge based on each
comment they leave? A disqus like startup can add such a system and the badges
would range from extremely positive to extremely negative (hateful useless
troll).

~~~
pinksoda
You can't see the MAC address of someone who visited your site.

~~~
paul9290
Ah yeah it's been awhile since I took a networking class; more into front end
coding these days & start-ups.

I guess even the IP address since it's based by router would not be completely
effective, especially in large companies. Though it could gather that there a
lot of trolls at one company or organization. Thinking of recent Yahoo/Skype
debacle and that guy losing his job over trolls.

------
billmcneale
My prediction: he implements his experiment for a few weeks, notices that
nobody comments on his posts any more and then he backpedals.

If you don't already know Dave Winer, he's very bitter about not getting the
recognition that he thinks he's owed (read the first sentence of the linked
article, it's actually quite representative of the guy) so he keeps coming up
with these "revolutionary" new things in the hope to invent something.

He'll come up with another wacky idea in a month.

------
photon_off
Every blog post, every URL, and every domain should have it's own forum. Make
that forum universal enough, fast enough, and easy enough to use, and you have
the twitter of forums.

This has been blatantly obvious to me for about 4 years now. The only reason I
don't pursue it is because I get distracted by easier and more interesting
"low hanging fruit".

------
alextp
A popular nlp blogger posted ( <http://nlpers.blogspot.com/2010/08/readers-
kill-blogs.html> ) about a related problem with comments (ie, that they're
getting more and more distributed).

------
wwortiz
This removes any real incentive to comment on an article as well as any use
comments may provide (as they aren't going to be viewed when the largest
traffic occurs but rather when people are looking through archives or
revisiting old posts).

~~~
studer
If your incentive for commenting is to be seen by others rather than provide
feedback to the author, you're exactly the kind of commenter he wasn't
interested in seeing:

"I know some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don't. I think
they're publications. And I think the role of comments is to add value to the
posts. If you want to rebut a post, then you can create your own blog and post
your rebuttal there."

~~~
wwortiz
I haven't ever commented on a blog but I was responding more to this:

> And I think the role of comments is to add value to the posts.

Which you have quoted there. The value shouldn't just be for authors it should
be for everyone, HN comments can add value to posts as well as value to the
posts' authors but choosing one over the other seems silly to me.

If he doesn't want comments to be valuable to the community (can't really
think of a better word) who reads his blog then he could simply add a contact
me to the bottom of the page like Mark Pilgrims blog posts show after a while.

------
ifthen
“I think they're publications.”

Old-school thinking, alive and well.

~~~
Ardit20
what's the new school thinking?

~~~
sunir
The Internet possesses and endless and continual discussion about a million
topics.

A blog post is the author's prompt to gain focus in the ongoing (and
evergoing) discussion to a particular topic, and relative to the author's
given position.

It's like a button sewn into the conversation fabric. It's also part of the
fabric and it has a little more gravity than a comment thread.

~~~
jacquesm
That's a beautiful analogy.

