Recently (as some of you have already noticed), I decided to remove the commenting system from this website.  I’d like to take this opportunity to now explain why.

For some time now, the thought of going comment-less has danced it’s way through the back of my mind every so often.  It wasn’t something I took all that seriously, but I still thought about it whenever I read or visited another site that also had comments disabled.  The temptation would tip-toe it’s way up to my shoulder and tap a few times, nagging me for attention.  It especially came up again when Jeremy Keith wrote his brilliant reasoning, and Colin Devroe added his thoughts to the discussion.

Back to skimming

I’ve addressed skimming before, but never really delved back into the idea of “why” people skim.  I suspect that when someone hits a blog that has comments enabled, they rush through because they desire (subconsciously or not), to be one of the first to respond with their own rebuttal or comparative idea in what amounts to comment diarrhea.  Not everyone, but just enough people to ruin the fun.

But if they aren’t the first to comment, then they quickly read several other comments, scroll through the middle section, read the last few comments to see where the topic is, and then write something quickly that fits in with the conversation.  Granted, this is based purely on my own speculation, but I doubt that I’m not far from the truth.

This isn’t how the process should go.  This became more clear to me when Andy Rutledge wrote his article about professional thinking.  Instead of leaving a knee-jerk comment (which he could’ve easily done), he took the time to go back to his own site and write an obviously well-thought-out article.  On that point alone, he earned my respect, regardless of my feelings toward his article at the time.

Had Andy instead chosen to simply comment and leave, the validity of his point would’ve possibly been diluted by context, and he would’ve likely been swarmed by people thinking they were defending me in some way.  Additionally, only my meager audience would’ve ever seen his thoughts.  By writing on his own blog about the topic, he brought the idea out to a much larger readerbase than my own and gave the subject some legs to walk on.

The limitations of commenting

As enjoyable as it is to leave a comment, it seems to counter-act a vital core of why we blog:  The networking and sharing of information. When leaving a comment, you have to consider not only the limited context that you’re allowed, but also the difficulty of getting a valid point across in such a competitive system.  You lose control of the conversation, and it can all degrade rather quickly.  Also, the ability to bring that conversation to other audiences beyond the comment-owner’s is very limited.

I’d like to see a blogging community that interconnects articles with thoughtful opinions; spidering out across the net from site to site, rather than a linear comment-system that goes not much further than the domain that hosts it.

Granted - by disabling comments I’m effectively killing the ability to chat casually about a topic. But I think that getting more people to write better cross-articles of their own is worth the effort.

How does commenting affect our writing?

Comments seem (in my observation) to bring about two types of people:  those who write articles in the hopes of getting more comments than anyone else, and those who write the most comments on other people’s articles.

The first set start to suffer because the writing begins to lead - guiding the reader into leaving a comment.  Possibly even offering more questions than advice, and giving little real value to take away for the reader.  This might not happen to many, but I’m certain of it.  These types of people need to turn off comments purely in the hopes that it will improve their own thoughts tenfold.  Take away the carrot, slow down the rabbit.

The latter is an interesting group.  Tending to be a lurker myself, I still read a lot of blogs.  I notice many of the same names showing up in the comment systems.  But interestingly enough, a trip to that person’s site sometimes reveals either a complete lack of writing, or anemic articles that resemble not much more than the comments they have written.  Quick bursts of thought with a few links thrown in for good measure.  Is commenting too much to blame for this type of blog neglect?  Nobody knows for sure, but I’d sure like to find out.

UPDATE: I have re-enabled comments so far for the Artblog, since the context seams to make sense.  I’ll probably also do this for the Artcast at some point as well.