Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?
Check out this article and the many references to bloggers who think that comments should be disabled on blogs. Read through those posts and consider whether or not you think it’s better to build community through comments or through conversations occurring across blogs–or maybe a combination of both. What, to your mind, is the purpose of comments on blogs and are we better served by encouraging people to respond to ideas on our blogs or over on their own blogs?
I read the article. Interesting. My short answer to the big question “Should we be commenting?”: it’s up to the blogger. Perhaps you want interaction on your own blog. Perhaps you don’t. Consider your purpose and audience and go from there. Incidentally, lots of non-blog websites offer a space for people to share and interact. Again, it depends on the purpose and what you hope to achieve. And perhaps you can turn on / off comments for a particular post, allowing you to play it by ear.
My perspective
If I didn’t want people to interact with me, I wouldn’t have started blogging in the first place. Whether that interaction comes via a trackback, a Tweet, or a comment makes little difference to me — I just want to connect. And enabling comments is an easy way for that to happen. As I said earlier, I have also realized recently that I often say more interesting and substantial things on other people’s blogs than I do on my own. I’m better at being invited than being the invitee, I guess.